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On  (he  Reverse. 

Surimono  : 

A  Crow  Stealing  a  Sword. 

This  sword  is  a  famous  heirloom  of  the 

ancient  house  of  Genii,  described  in  the  old 

romance  known  as  "Genji  Monogatori. 

By  Hokusai. 


:  -a  -fi  -J 


5  E3- 

«15  e.c  'sea 

.2-1    2        r° 
CQ        i        U. 


H$C^4 


IMPRESSIONS 
OF   UKIYO-YE 

THE  SCHOOL  OF 

THE  JAPANESE  COLOUR-PRINT 

ARTISTS 

BY 

Dora  Amsden 


The  things  of  Heaven 

and  of  Buddha  :    The  Life  of  Men 

and  Women. 

From  the  Mang-wa  of  Hokusai. 


PAUL  ELDER  AND  COMPANY 
SAN   FRANCISCO  AND  NEW  YORK 


Copyright  1905 

by  Paul  Elder  and  Company 


REVISED   EDITION 


The  Tomoye  Prest 


N. 


TO 

MY  BROTHER  AND  BEST  FRIEND 

CHARLES  WATSON  JACKSON 


179893 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    UKIYO-YE 


Contents. 


The  Rise  of  Ukiyo-ye  (The  Floating  World)         - 

Genroku  (The  Golden  Era  of  Romance  and  Art)        - 

The  School  of  Torii  (The  Printers'  Branch  of  Ukiyo-ye) 
-'Utamaro  (Le  Fondateur  de  L'Ecole  de  la  Vie)  - 

"The  Romance  of  Hokusai  (Master  of  Ukiyo-ye)    ... 
c  Hiroshige  (Landscape  Painter  and  Apostle  of  Impressionism) 

Analytical  Comparisons  between  the  Masters  of  Ukiyo-ye 

Hints  to  Collectors  of  Ukiyo-ye  Gems      - 

Bibliography,  for  Use  of  Students  ,..-.. 

Fac-similes  of  the  Most  Famous  Signatures  of  the  Ukiyo-ye  Artists 

Index     -.        - 


Page   I 

..  ,3 

"  25 

"  35 

"  47 

"  57 

"  69 

"  77 

"  78 

"  80 

"  83 


Illustrations. 

Hiroshige  I — Biwa,    the    Beautiful    Lake,    named    after    the    four- 
stringed  Lute             ........  Frontispiece 

Suzuki    Harunobu  —  An   Illustration    from    the    "Occupations    of 

Women "  ........       Opposite  Page  22 

Kiyonaga — Under  the  Cherry  Blooms             .....  30 

Toyokuni — The  Actor  Kikugoro  ......  34 

*  Utamaro— While  Mother  Sleeps "40 

Hokusai — Two  Ladies           .......  48 

Hok'kei — A  River  Scene           .......  52 

Hiroshige — Wistaria  Viewing  at  Kameido          ....  58 

Yeishi — Two  Ladies           --------  70 

Shunko — An  actor  in  the  Miyako  Dance            ....  72 

Kitugawa  Yeizan — The  Snowstorm     ------  74 

Hokusai — One  of  the  Thirty-six  Views  of  Mount  Fuji         -  76 

Hokusai — Surimono  :    A  Crow  Stealing  a  Sword            ...  First  Flyleaf 

Yanagawa  Shigenobu — The  Ride  of   the  Warrior  Miura  Kenisuke  Last  Fly-leaf 

*  From  the  Happcr  Collection. 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


The  Rise  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

The  Floating  World. 

^■fe^HE  Art  of  Ukiyo-ye  is  a  "spiritual  rendering  of  the 
£  realism  and  naturalness  of  the  daily  life,  intercourse  with 

^^nature,  and  imaginings,  of  a  lively  impressionable  race,  in 
the  full  tide  of  a  passionate  craving  for  art."  This  char- 
acterization of  Jarves  sums  up  forcibly  the  motive  of  the  masters  of 
Ukiyo-ye,  the  Popular  School  of  Japanese  Art,  so  poetically  inter- 
preted "The  Floating  World." 

To  the  Passionate  Pilgrim,  and  devotee  of  nature  and  art,  who 
has  visited  the  enchanted  Orient,  it  is  unnecessary  to  prepare  the  way 
for  the  proper  understanding  of  Ukiyo-ye.  This  joyous  idealist 
trusts  less  to  dogma  than  to  impressions.  "I  know  nothing  of  Art, 
but  I  know  what  I  like,"  is  the  language  of  sincerity,  sincerity  which 
does  not  take  a  stand  upon  creed  or  tradition,  nor  upon  cut  and  dried 
principles  and  conventions.  It  is  truly  said  that  "they  alone  can  pre- 
tend to  fathom  the  depth  of  feeling  and  beauty  in  an  alien  art,  who 
resolutely  determine  to  scrutinize  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  inhab- 
itant of  the  place  of  its  birth." 

To  the  born  cosmopolite,  who  assimilates  alien  ideas  by  instinct, 
or  the  gauging  power  of  his  sub-conscious  intelligence,  the  feat  is  easy, 
but  to  the  less  intuitively  gifted,  it  is  necessary  to  serve  a  novitiate,  in 
order  to  appreciate  "a  wholly  recalcitrant  element  like  Japanese  Art, 
which  at  once  demands  attention,  and  defies  judgment  upon  accepted 
theories."  These  sketches  are  not  an  individual  expression,  but  an 
endeavour  to  give  in  condensed  form  the  opinions  of  those  qualified  by 

[1] 


IMPRESSIONS    ^OF      UKIYO-YE 

study  and  research  to  speak  with  authority  upon  the  form 
The  Rise  of  Japanese  Art,  which  in  its  most  concrete  development 
Ukiyo-ye.  ^e  Ukiyo-ye  print  is  now  claiming  the  attention  of  the 
art  world. 

The  development  of  colour  printing  is,  however,  only  the  objec- 
tive symbol  of  Ukiyo-ye,  for,  as  our  Western  oracle,  Professor  Fen- 
ollosa,  said,  "The  true  history  of  Ukiyo-ye,  although  including  prints 
as  one  of  its  most  fascinating  diversions,  is  not  a  history  of  the  tech- 
nical art  of  printing,  rather  an  aesthetic  history  of  a  peculiar  kind 
of  design." 

The  temptation  to  make  use  of  one  more  quotation,  in  concluding 
these  introductory  remarks,  is  irresistible,  for  in  it  Walter  Pater  sets 
his  seal  upon  art  as  a  legitimate  pursuit,  no  matter  what  form  it  takes, 
though  irreconcilable  with  preconceived  ideas  and  traditions.  "The 
legitimate  contention  is  not  of  one  age  or  school  of  art  against  another, 
but  of  all  successive  schools  alike,  against  the  stupidity  which  is  dead 
to  the  substance,  and  the  vulgarity  which  is  dead  to  form." 

As  the  Popular  School  (Ukiyo-ye)  was  the  outcome  of  over  a 
thousand  years  of  growth,  it  is  necessary  to  glance  back  along  the 
centuries  in  order  to  understand  and  follow  the  processes  of  its  de- 
velopment. 

Though  the  origin  of  painting  in  Japan  is  shrouded  in  obscurity, 
and  veiled  in  tradition,  there  is  no  doubt  that  China  and  Corea  were 
the  direct  sources  from  which  she  derived  her  art;  whilst  more  in- 
directly she  was  influenced  by  Persia  and  India, — the  sacred  fount 
of  oriental  art, — as  of  religion,  which  ever  went  hand  in  hand. 

In  China,  the  Ming  dynasty  gave  birth  to  an  original  style,  which 

[2] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


for  centuries  dominated  the  art  of  Japan;  the  sweeping 
calligraphic    strokes    of    Hokusai    mark    the    sway    of      The  Rise 
hereditary   influence,    and   his   wood-cutters,    trained   to       Ukiyo-ye. 
follow  the  graceful,  fluent  lines  of  his  purely  Japanese 
work,  were  staggered  by  his  sudden  flights  into  angular  realism. 

The  Chinese  and  Buddhist  schools  of  art  dated  from  the 
sixth  century,  and  in  Japan  the  Emperor  Heizei  founded  an  im- 
perial academy  in  808.  This  academy,  and  the  school  of  Yamato, 
founded  by  Motomitsu  in  the  eleventh  century,  led  up  to  the  celebrated 
school  of  Tosa,  which  with  Kano,  its  august  and  aristocratic  rival, 
held  undisputed  supremacy  for  centuries,  until  challenged  by  plebeian 
Ukiyo-ye,  the  school  of  the  common  people  of  Japan. 

Tosa  has  been  characterized  as  the  "manifestation  of  ardent 
faith,  through  the  purity  of  an  ethereal  style."  Tosa  represented  the 
taste  of  the  court  of  Kyoto,  and  was  relegated  to  the  service  of  the 
aristocracy;  it  reflected  the  esoteric  mystery  of  Shinto  and  the  hal- 
lowed entourage  of  the  divinely  descended  Mikado.  The  ceremonial 
of  the  court,  its  fetes  and  religious  solemnities, — dances  attended  by 
daimios,  in  robes  of  state  falling  in  full  harmonious  folds, — were 
depicted  with  consummate  elegance  and  delicacy  of  touch,  which 
betrayed  familiarity  with  the  occult  methods  of  Persian  miniature 
painting.  The  Tosa  artists  used  very  fine,  pointed  brushes,  and  set 
off  the  brilliance  of  their  colouring  with  resplendent  backgrounds  in 
gold  leaf,  and  it  is  to  Tosa  we  owe  the  intricate  designs,  almost 
microscopic  in  detail,  which  are  to  be  seen  upon  the  most  beautiful 
specimens  of  gold  lacquer  work;  and  screens,  which  for  richness  have 
never  been  surpassed 

[31 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 

Japanese  Art  was  ever  dominated  by  the  priestly 
The  Rise  hierarchy,  and  also  by  temporal  rulers,  and  of  this 
Ukivo-ve  *^e  scno°l  °f  Tosa  was  a  noted  example,  as  it  received 
its  title  from  the  painter-prince,  Tsunetaka,  who,  besides 
being  the  originator  of  an  artistic  centre,  held  the  position  of  vice- 
governor  of  the  province  of  Tosa.  From  its  incipience,  Tosa  owed  its 
prestige  to  the  Mikado  and  his  nobles,  as  later  Kano  became  the 
official  school  of  the  usurping  Shoguns.  Thus  the  religious,  political 
and  artistic  history  of  Japan  were  ever  closely  allied.  The  Tosa 
style  was  combated  by  the  influx  of  Chinese  influence,  culminating  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  in  the  rival  school  of  Kano.  The  school  of 
Kano  owed  its  origin  to  China.  At  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury the  Chinese  Buddhist  priest,  Josetsu,  left  his  own  country  for 
Japan,  and  bringing  with  him  Chinese  tradition,  he  founded  a  new 
dynasty  whose  descendants  still  represent  the  most  illustrious  school  of 
painting  in  Japan.  The  Kano  school  to  this  day  continues  to  be 
the  stronghold  of  classicism,  which  in  Japan  signifies  principally 
adherence  to  Chinese  models,  a  traditional  technique,  and  avoidance 
of  subjects  which  represent  every-day  life.  The  Chinese  calligraphic 
stroke  lay  at  the  root  of  the  technique  of  Kano,  and  the  Japanese  brush 
owed  its  facility  elementarily  to  the  art  of  writing.  Dexterous 
handling  of  the  brush  is  necessary  to  produce  these  bold,  incisive 
strokes,  and  the  signs  of  the  alphabet  require  little  expansion  to  resolve 
themselves  into  draped  forms,  and  as  easily  they  can  be  decomposed 
into  their  abstract  element. 

Walter  Crane  inculcates  the  wisdom  of  this  method  for  prelim- 
inary practice  with  the  brush  in  his  valuable  study,  "Line  and  Form," 

[4] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


but   the  Chinese   and  Japanese   ideographs   give   a   far 

wider  scope  to  initial  brush  work.  The  Rise 

The  early  artists  of  Kano  reduced  painting  to  an  Ukiyo-ye. 
academic  art,  and  destroyed  naturalism,  until  the  genius 
of  Masanobu,  who  gave  his  name  to  the  school,  and  still  more,  that 
of  his  son,  Motonobu,  the  real  "Kano,"  grafted  on  to  Chinese  models, 
and  monotony  oC  monochrome,  a  warmth  of  colour  and  harmony  of 
design  which  regenerated  and  revivified  the  whole  system.  Kano 
yielded  to  Chinese  influence,  Tosa  combated  it,  and  strove  for  a 
purely  national  art,  Ukiyo-ye  bridged  the  chasm,  and  became  the 
exponent  of  both  schools,  bringing  about  an  expansion  in  art  which 
could  never  have  been  realized  by  these  aristocratic  rivals.  The 
vigour  and  force  of  the  conquering  Shoguns  led  Kano,  while  the  lustre 
of  Tosa  was  an  emanation  from  the  sanctified  and  veiled  Mikado. 

The  favourite  subjects  of  the  Kano  painters  were  chiefly  Chinese 
saints  and  philosophers,  mythological  and  legendary  heroes,  repre- 
sented in  various  attitudes  with  backgrounds  of  conventional  clouds 
and  mists,  interspersed  with  symbolical  emblems.  Many  of  the  Kano 
saints  and  heroes  bear  a  striking  resemblance  to  mediaeval  subjects,  as 
they  are  often  represented  rising  from  billowy  cloud  masses,  robed  in 
ethereal  draperies,  and  with  heads  encircled  by  the  nimbus. 

Beneath  the  brush  of  Motonobu,  formal  classicism  melted.  In 
this  new  movement,  says  Kakuzo  Okakura,  "art  fled  from  man  to 
nature,  and  in  the  purity  of  ink  landscapes,  in  the  graceful  spray  of 
bamboos  and  pines,  sought  and  found  her  asylum." 

Space  will  not  permit  a  glance  at  the  personnel  of  the  many 
schools  of  Japanese  Art.   A  lengthy  catalogue  alone  would  be  required 

[5] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


to  enumerate  the  masters  who  inaugurated  schools, 
The  Rise  for  if  an  artist  developed  exceptional  talent  in  Japan, 
Ukiyo-ye        ne   immediately    founded   an   individual   school,   and   it 

was  incumbent  upon  his  descendants  for  generations  to 
adhere  rigidly  to  the  principles  he  had  inculcated,  so  becoming  slaves 
to  traditional  methods. 

During  the  anarchy  of  the  fourteenth  century  art  stagnated  in 
Japan,  but  a  revival,  corresponding  with  our  European  Renaissance, 
followed.  The  fifteenth  century  in  Japan,  as  in  Europe,  was  essen- 
tially the  age  of  revival.  Wm.  Anderson  epitomizes  in  one  pregnant 
phrase  this  working  power:  "All  ages  of  healthy  human  prosperity 
are  more  or  less  revivals.  A  little  study  would  probably  show  that 
the  Ptolemaic  era  in  Egypt  was  a  renaissance  of  the  Theban  age, 
in  architecture  as  in  other  respects,  while  the  golden  period  of 
Augustus  in  Rome  was  largely  a  Greek  revival."  There  seems  ever 
to  have  been  a  reciprocal  action  in  Japanese  Art.  Tosa,  famed  for 
delicacy  of  touch,  minutiae  of  detail  and  brilliance  of  colour,  yielded 
to  the  black  and  white,  vigorous  force  of  Kano.  Kano  again  was 
modified  by  the  glowing  colouring  introduced  by  Kano  Masanobu 
and  Motonobu.  Later  we  see  the  varied  palette  of  Miyagawa 
Choshun  efface  the  monochromic  simplicity  of  Moronobu,  the  ring- 
leader of  the  printers  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

The  leading  light  in  art  in  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century 
was  Cho  Densu,  the  Fra  Angelico  of  Japan,  who,  a  simple  monk, 
serving  in  a  Kyoto  temple,  must  in  a  trance  of  religious  and  artistic 
ecstasy  have  beheld  a  spectrum  of  fadeless  dyes,  so  wondrous  were 
the  colours  he  lavished  upon  the  draperies  of  his  saints  and  sages. 

[6] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


The  splendour  of  this  beatific  vision  has  never  faded, 

for   the  masters  who   followed  in   the   footsteps  of  the      The  Rise 

inspired  monk  reverently  preserved  the  secret  of  these     ukiy0-ye. 

precious  shades,  till  at  last,  in  the  form  of  the  Ukiyo-ye 

print,  they  were  sown  broadcast,  and  revolutionized  the  colour  sense 

of  the  art  world. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  Japanese  Art  of  the  nineteenth  century 
is  often  nothing  but  a  reproduction  of  the  works  of  the  ancient  great 
masters,  and  the  methods  and  mannerisms  of  the  fifteenth  century 
artists  have  ever  served  as  examples  for  later  students.  The  glory  of 
the  fifteenth  century  was  increased  by  Mitsunobu  of  Tosa,  and  above 
all  by  the  two  great  Kano  artists,  Masanobu  and  his  son,  Motonobu, 
who  received  the  tide  of  "Hogen,"  and  is  referred  to  as  "Ko  Hogen," 
or  the  ancient  Hogen,  of  whom  it  has  been  remarked,  "He  filled  the 
air  with  luminous  beams." 

By  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  principles  of  art  in  Japan 
became  definitely  fixed,  as,  almost  contemporaneously,  Giotto  estab- 
lished a  canon  of  art  in  Florence,  which  he,  in  turn,  had  received 
from  the  Attic  Greeks,  through  Cimabue,  and  which  was  condensed 
by  Ruskin  into  a  grammar  of  art,  under  the  term  "Laws  of  Fesole." 

The  two  great  schools,  Tosa  and  Kano,  flourished  independently 
until  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  genius  of  the  pop- 
ular artists,  forming  the  school  of  Ukiyo-ye,  gradually  fused  the  tradi- 
tions of  Tosa  and  Kano,  absorbing  the  methods  of  these  rival 
schools, — which,  differing  in  technique  and  motive,  were  united  in  their 
proud  disdain  of  the  new  art  which  dared  to  represent  the  manners 
and   customs   of    the   common   people.      Harunobu    and    Hokusai, 

[7] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

Kiyonaga  and  Hiroshige  were  the  crowning  glory  of  all 
The  Rise       the   schools, — the   artists   whose   genius   told   the   story 

Ukiyo-ye  °^  t^ie'r  country»  day  by  ^ay«  weaving  a  century  of 
history  into  one  living  encyclopedia,  sumptuous  in  form, 
kaleidoscopic  in  colour. 

Ukiyo-ye  prepared  Japan  for  intercourse  with  other  nations  by 
developing  in  the  common  people  an  interest  in  other  countries,  in 
science  and  foreign  culture,  and  by  promoting  the  desire  to  travel, 
through  the  means  of  illustrated  books  of  varied  scenes.  To  Ukiyo- 
ye,  the  Japanese  owed  the  gradual  expansion  of  international  con- 
sciousness, which  culminated  in  the  revolution  of  1  868, — a  revolu- 
tion, the  most  astonishing  in  history,  accomplished  as  if  by  miracle; 
but  the  esoteric  germ  of  this  seemingly  spontaneous  growth  of  Meiji 
lay  in  the  atelier  of  the  artists  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

To  trace  the  evolution  of  the  Popular  School  in  its  development 
through  nearly  three  centuries  is  a  lengthy  study,  of  deep  interest. 
The  mists  of  uncertainty  gather  about  the  lives  of  many  apostles  of 
Ukiyo-ye,  from  the  originator,  Iwasa  Matahei,  to  Hiroshige,  one  of 
the  latest  disciples,  whose  changes  of  style  and  diversity  of  signature 
have  given  rise  to  the  supposition  that  as  many  as  three  artists  are 
entitled  to  the  name.  These  mists  of  tradition  cannot  be  altogether 
dispersed  by  such  indefatigable  students  as  M.  Louis  Gonse,  Pro- 
fessor Fenollosa,  M.  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  Wm.  Anderson,  John 
S.  Happer  and  many  others,  but  by  their  aid  the  methods  of  Oriental 
Art  are  clarified  and  explained. 

Iwasa  Matahei,  the  date  of  whose  birth  is  given  as  1578,  is  con- 
sidered to  be  the  originator  of  the  Popular  School.     The  spontaneous 

[8] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


growth   of    great   movements   and    the   mystery   of   the 

source  of  genius  are  illustrated  in  the  career  of  Matahei.      The  Rise 

His  environment  fitted  him  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of      Ukiyo-ye. 

his  master,  Mitsunori  of  Tosa.     Yet  the  city  of  Kyoto, 

veiled  in  mystic  sanctity,  where  religion  and  princely  patronage  held 

art  in  conventional  shackles,  gave  birth  to  the  leader  of  the  Popular 

School.     Still,  was  not  Kyoto,  the  sacred  heart  of  Japan,  a  fit  cradle 

for  Ukiyo-ye,  the  life  and  soul  of  the  Japanese  people? 

Matahei  and  his  followers  entered  into  the  spirit  of  the  Japanese 
temperament,  and  from  the  Popular  School  sprang  liberty  and  a 
novelty  of  horizon.  The  aristocratic  schools  had  confined  themselves 
to  representations  of  princely  pageantry,  to  portraiture,  and  to  ideal 
pictures  of  mythical  personages,  saints  and  sages.  The  tradition  of 
China  showed  in  all  their  landscapes,  which  reflected  ethereal  vistas 
classically  rendered,  of  an  alien  land.  Therefore  Matahei  was  con- 
temptuously disowned  by  Tosa  for  depicting  scenes  from  the  life  of 
his  countrymen,  yet  the  technique  of  Kano  and  Tosa  were  the  birth- 
right of  the  artists  of  Ukiyo-ye,  an  inalienable  inheritance  in  form, 
into  which  they  breathed  the  spirit  of  life,  thus  revivifying  an  art 
grown  cold  and  academical,  and  frosted  with  tradition.  The  colour- 
ing of  Kano  had  faded,  tending  continually  toward  monochrome,  but 
the  Ukiyo-ye  painters  restored  the  use  of  gorgeous  pigments,  pre- 
serving the  glory  of  Kano  Yeitoku,  the  court  painter  to  Hideyoshi. 

In  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  appeared  Hishigawa 
Moronobu,  considered  by  many  to  be  the  real  founder  of  Ukiyo-ye. 
His  genius  welded  with  the  new  motif  the  use  of  the  block  for  printing, 
an  innovation  which  led  to  the  most  characteristic  development  in 

[91 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


Ukiyo-ye  art.  This  art  of  printing,  which  originated 
The  Rise  in  China  and  Corea,  had,  until  the  beginning  of  the 
•ji0  seventeenth  century,  been  confined  solely  to  the  service 

of  religion  for  the  reproduction  of  texts  and  images,  but 
Moronobu  conceived  the  idea  of  using  the  form  of  printed  book 
illustration,  just  coming  into  vogue,  as  a  channel  to  set  forth  the  life 
of  the  people.  Besides  painting  and  illustrating  books,  he  began 
printing  single  sheets,  occasionally  adding  to  the  printed  outlines 
dashes  of  colour  from  the  brush,  principally  in  orange  and  green. 
These  sheets,  the  precursors  of  the  Ukiyo-ye  prints,  superseded  the 
Otsu-ye, — impressionistic  hand-paintings,  draughted  hastily  for  rapid 
circulation.  The  Otsu-ye  were  sometimes  richly  illuminated,  the 
largest  surfaces  in  the  costumes  being  filled  in  with  a  ground  of  black 
lacquer,  and  ornamented  with  layers  of  gold  leaf  attached  by  varnish. 
Moronobu  acquired  his  technique  from  both  Tosa  and  Kano,  but 
was  originally  a  designer  for  the  rich  brocades  and  tissues  woven  in 
Kyoto.  He  added  to  this  art  that  of  embroidery,  and  leaving  Kyoto, 
took  up  this  branch  at  the  rival  city  Yedo,  where  all  the  arts  and 
crafts  were  developing  under  the  fostering  care  of  the  Tokugawa 
Shoguns,  the  dynasty  with  which  Ukiyo-ye  art  is  practically  co- 
extensive. It  was  Hishigawa  Moronobu  who  designed  for  his  coun- 
trywomen their  luxurious  trailing  robes,  with  enormous  sleeves,  richly 
embroidered, — gorgeous  and  stately  garments  which  he  loved  to 
reproduce  on  paper,  with  marvellous  powers  of  sweeping  line.  As 
in  all  fashions  of  dress,  in  time  the  graceful  lines  became  exaggerated 
until,  in  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  they  overstepped  the 
limits  of  beauty,  and  approached  the  realm  of  caricature.     Today,  in 

[10] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 


the  modern  poster,  we  see  perpetuated  the  degenerate 
offspring   of   the   genius   of   Moronobu,   of  whom  it   is       The  Rise 
remarked  that  his  enlarged  compositions  have  the  plas-      Uluyo-ye. 
ticity  of  bas-reliefs. 

An  artist  who  greatly  influenced  Moronobu  was  Tanyu,  of  the 
School  of  Kano,  whose  masterpiece  may  be  seen  at  the  great  temple 
in  Kyoto, — four  painted  panels  of  lions,  of  indescribable  majesty. 
M.  Louis  Gonse  tells  us  that  one  of  Tanyu's  kakemonos,  belonging  to 
a  celebrated  French  painter,  well  sustains  the  test  of  comparison  with 
its  companion  pictures,  in  the  artist's  studio,  by  Durer,  Rembrandt 
and  Rubens.  Under  Tanyu's  direction  the  task  of  reproducing  the 
old  masterpieces  was  undertaken.  The  artists  of  Ukiyo-ye  were  ever 
ready  to  profit  by  the  teaching  of  all  the  schools;  therefore,  properly 
to  follow  the  methods  of  the  Popular  School,  we  must  study  the  work 
of  the  old  masters  and  the  subjects  from  which  they  derived  their 
inspiration. 

In  this  brief  resume  we  cannot  follow  the  fluctuations  of  Japanese 
Art  through  the  centuries.  During  long  periods  of  conflict  and  bloody 
internecine  strife,  art  languished;  when  peace  reigned,  then  in  the 
seclusion  of  their  yashikis  these  fierce  and  princely  warriors  threw 
down  their  arms  and  surrendered  themselves  to  the  service  of  beauty 
and  of  art.  Nor  had  the  dainty  inmates  of  their  castles  languished 
idly  during  these  stirring  times.  Often  they  defended  their  honour 
and  their  homes  against  treacherous  neighbours.  It  was  a  Japanese 
woman  who  led  her  conquering  countrymen  into  Corea.  In  the  arts 
of  peace  the  cultured  women  of  Japan  kept  pace  with  their  lovers  and 
husbands.      A  woman  revised  and  enlarged  the  alphabet,  and  some 

MM 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 


of  the  most  beautiful  classic  poems  are  ascribed  to  them. 

The  Rise       Well  might  the  Japanese  fight  fiercely  for  his  altar  and 

Ukiyo-ye.       home,  with  the  thought  of  the  flower-soft  hands  that  were 

waiting  to  strip  him  of  his  armour  and  stifle  with  caresses 

the  recollection  of  past  conflict.     The  early  history  of  Japan  suggests 

a  comparison  with  ancient  Greece,  and  the  Japanese  poets  might  have 

apostrophized  their  country,  as  did  Byron  the  land  of  his  adoption: 

B  The  isles  of  Greece,  the  isles  of  Greece ! 
Where  burning  Sappho  loved  and  sung, 
Where  grew  the  arts  of  war  and  peace, — 
Where  Delos  rose,  and  Phoebus  sprung  I " 

Happily  Japan,  unlike  Greece,  withstood  the  enervating  influences 
of  luxury  and  the  passionate  adoration  of  beauty.  Princes  laboured 
alike  with  chisel  and  with  brush,  and  the  loftiest  rulers  disdained  not 
the  tool  of  the  artisan.  Art  Industrial  kissed  Grand  Art,  which 
remained  virile  beneath  the  sturdy  benediction.  Therefore  Japan  lives, 
unlike  Greece,  whose  beauty  in  decay  called  forth  that  saddest  of 
dirges,  ending, 

"  'Tis  Greece,  but  living  Greece  no  more.B 

In  Japan,  art  lightens  the  burden  of  labour,  utility  and  beauty  go 
hand  in  hand,  and  the  essential  and  the  real  reach  upward,  and  touch 
the  beautiful  and  the  ideal. 


[12] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


Genroku. 

The  Golden  Era  of  Romance  and  Art. 

^■Ab^'HE  Nen-go  of  Genroku,  from   1  688  to   1  703,  was  that 

£  period  of  incomparable  glory  which  the  Japanese  revere 

^f    as  the   French  do   the   time  of  Louis   the   Fourteenth. 

Peace   had  long  reigned   and   art   flourished  under  the 

fostering  care  of  the  Tokugawa  Shoguns. 

Then  lived  the  great  worker  in  lacquer,  Korin,  pupil  of  Sotatsu, 
the  flower  painter,  unrivalled  artists  who  had  absorbed  the  secrets  of 
both  Kano  and  Tosa.  Itcho,  the  grand  colourist,  flourished,  and 
Kenzan,  brother  of  Korin,  the  "Exponent  in  pottery  decoration  of  the 
Korin  School." 

Yedo,  the  new  capital  of  the  usurping  Tokugawas,  now  became 
the  Mecca  of  genius,  rivalling  the  ancient  metropolis  Kyoto,  for  the 
great  Shoguns  encouraged  art  in  all  forms,  not  disdaining  to  enroll 
themselves  as  pupils  to  the  masters  in  painting  and  lacquer.  The 
greatest  ruler  became  one  of  the  greatest  artists,  even  assuming  the 
art  title  of  Sendai  Shogun.  In  this  age  the  height  of  perfection  was 
reached  in  metal  work,  both  chased  and  cast. 

"The  sword  is  the  soul  of  the  Samurai,"  says  the  old  Japanese 
motto,  therefore  its  decoration  and  adornment  was  a  sacred  service  to 
which  genius  delighted  to  dedicate  itself.  In  Japan  the  greatest  artists 
were  sometimes  carvers  and  painters  and  workers  in  metals  in  one,  and 
suggest  comparison  with  the  European  masters  of  two  centuries  earlier. 
Did  not  Botticelli  take  his  name  from  the  goldsmith  for  whom  he 
worked,  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci  began  his  art  life  by  "twisting  metal 

[13] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 

screens  for  the  tombs  of  trie  Medici"?  Later  we  see 
him  playing  before  his  patron,  Francesco,  in  Milan,  upon 
that  weird  silver  harp  he  had  himself  constructed,  till  at 
last,  perfected  in  art,  he  projected  upon  canvas  the 
Mona  Lisa,  that  "realization  of  strange  thoughts  and  fantastic  reveries 
and  exquisite  passions." 

Also  in  Japan,  as  in  Europe,  the  genius  of  the  nation  was  conse- 
crated to  the  dead.  More  than  half  of  Michelangelo's  life  was 
devoted  to  the  decoration  of  tombs,  and  the  shrines  of  the  Shoguns 
are  the  greatest  art  monuments  in  Japan.  Preoccupation  with  graves 
perhaps  enabled  the  Japanese  to  face  death  so  readily,  even  embracing 
it  upon  the  slightest  pretext. 

Genroku  was  the  acme  of  the  age  of  chivalry.  Its  tales  of  deadly 
duels  and  fierce  vendettas  are  the  delight  of  the  nation.  The  history 
of  the  Forty-seven  Ronin  equals  any  mediaeval  tale  of  bloodthirsty 
vengeance  and  feudal  devotion.  This  Japanese  vendetta  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century  is  still  re-enacted  upon  the  stage,  and  remains  the 
most  popular  drama  of  the  day,  and  the  actor  designers  of  Torii  ever 
delighted  in  it  as  a  subject  for  illustration.  A  brief  outline  of  the 
story  may  be  of  interest  and  serve  to  recall  its  charming  interpretation 
by  Mitford. 

The  cause  of  this  famous  drama  of  vendetta  was  the  avarice  of 
Kotsuki-no-Suke,  a  courtier  of  the  Shogun  at  Yedo  who  might  have 
served  as  prototype  for  "Pooh  Bah,"  in  Gilbert's  clever  burlesque. 
This  pompous  official  was  detailed  to  receive  at  his  castle  and  instruct 
in  court  etiquette  two  provincial  noblemen,  to  whom  had  been  assigned 
the  onerous  task  of  entertaining  the  Mikado's  envoy  from  Kyoto.     In 

[14] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

return  for  this  tutelage  they  duly  sent  many  gifts  to 
Kotsuki-no-Suke,  but  not  costly  enough  to  gratify  the 
rapacity  of  the  Gilbertian  minister,  who  day  by  day 
became  more  insufferably  arrogant,  not  having  been 
"sufficiently  insulted." 

Then  a  counsellor  of  one  of  these  great  lords,  being  wise  in  his 
generation,  and  fearing  for  his  master's  safety,  rode  at  midnight  to 
the  castle  of  the  greedy  official,  leaving  a  present  or  bribe  of  a  thou- 
sand pieces  of  silver.     This  generous  donation  had  the  desired  effect. 

"You  have  come  early  to  court,  my  lord,"  Was  the  suave  welcome 
the  unconscious  nobleman  received  the  next  morning.  "I  shall  have 
the  honour  of  calling  your  attention  to  several  points  of  etiquette  to- 
day." The  next  moment  the  countenance  of  Kotsuki-no-Suke 
clouded,  and,  turning  haughtily  toward  his  other  pupil  from  whom 
no  largesse  had  been  received,  he  cried,  "Here,  my  lord  of  Takumi, 
be  so  good  as  to  tie  for  me  the  ribbon  of  my  sock,"  adding  under 
his  breath,  "boor  of  the  provinces." 

"Stop,  my  lord!"  cried  Takumi-no-Kami,  and,  drawing  his  dirk, 
he  flung  it  at  the  insolent  nobleman's  head.  Then  a  great  tumult 
arose.  His  court  cap  had  saved  from  death  Kotsuki-no-Suke,  and 
he  fled  from  the  spot,  whilst  Takumi-no-Kami  was  arrested,  and  to 
divert  the  disgrace  of  being  beheaded,  hastily  performed  hari-kiri; 
his  goods  and  castle  were  confiscated  and  his  retainers  became  Ronin 
(literally  "Wave  Men"),  cast  adrift  to  follow  their  fortunes,  roving 
at  will. 

The  vendetta,  sworn  to  and  carried  out  by  these  forty-seven  faith- 
ful servants,  is  the  sequel  of  the  story.     Oishi  Kuranosuki,  the  chief 

[15] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

of  the  Ronin,  planned  the  scheme  of  revenge.  To  put 
Kotsuki-no-Suke  off  his  guard,  the  band  dispersed,  many 
of  them  under  the  disguise  of  workmen  taking  service 
in  the  yashifyi  of  their  enemy  in  order  to  become  familiar 
with  the  interior  of  the  fortification. 

Meanwhile  Kuranosuki,  to  further  mislead  his  enemies,  plunged 
into  a  life  of  wild  dissipation,  until  Kotsuki-no-Suke,  hearing  of  his 
excesses,  relaxed  his  own  vigilance,  only  keeping  half  the  guard  he 
had  at  first  appointed.  The  wife  and  friends  of  Kuranosuki  were 
greatly  grieved  at  his  loose  conduct,  for  he  took  nobody  into  his  con- 
fidence. Even  a  man  from  Satsuma,  seeing  him  lying  drunk  in  the 
open  street,  dared  to  kick  his  body,  muttering,  "Faithless  beast,  thou 
givest  thyself  up  to  women  and  wine,  thou  art  unworthy  of  the  name 
of  a  Samurai." 

But  Kuranosuki  endured  the  contumely,  biding  his  time,  and  at 
last,  in  the  winter  of  the  following  year,  when  the  ground  was  white 
with  snow,  the  carefully  planned  assault  was  successfully  attempted. 
The  castle  of  Kotsuki-no-Suke  was  taken,  but  what  was  the  consterna- 
tion of  the  brave  Ronin,  when,  after  a  prolonged  search,  they  failed 
to  discover  their  victim!  In  despair,  they  were  about  to  despatch 
themselves,  in  accordance  with  their  severe  code  of  honour,  when 
Kuranosuki,  pushing  aside  a  hanging  picture,  discovered  a  secret 
courtyard.  There,  hidden  behind  some  sacks  of  charcoal,  they  found 
their  enemy,  and  dragged  him  out,  trembling  with  cold  and  terror, 
clad  in  his  costly  nightrobe  of  embroidered  white  satin.  Then  humbly 
kneeling,  Oishi  Kuranosuki  thus  addressed  him:  "My  lord,  we  be- 
seech you  to  perform  Seppuku  (happy  despatch).     I  shall  have  the 

[16] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


Genroku. 


honour  to  act  as  your  lordship's  second,  and  when,  with 
all  humility,  I  shall  have  received  your  lordship's  head, 
it  is  my  intention  to  lay  it  as  an  offering  upon  the  grave 
of  our  master,  Asano-Takumi-no-Kami."  Unfortu- 
nately, the  carefully  planned  programme  of  the  Ronin  failed  to  recom- 
mend itself  to  Kotsuki-no-Suke,  and  he  declined  their  polite  invitation 
to  disembowel  himself,  whereupon  Kuranosuki  at  one  stroke  cut  off 
the  craven  head,  with  the  blade  used  by  his  master  in  taking  his  own 
life. 

So  in  solemn  procession  the  Forty-seven  Ronin,  bearing  their 
enemy's  head,  approached  the  Temple  of  Sengakuji,  where  they  were 
met  by  the  abbot  of  the  monastery,  who  led  them  to  their  master's 
tomb.  There,  after  washing  in  water,  they  laid  it,  thus  accomplish- 
ing the  vendetta;  then  praying  for  decent  burial  and  for  masses,  they 
took  their  own  lives. 

Thus  ended  the  tragic  story,  and  visitors  to  the  temple  are  still 
shown  the  receipt  given  by  the  retainers  of  the  son  of  Kotsuki-no-Suke 
for  the  head  of  their  lord's  father,  returned  to  them  by  the  priest  of 
Sengakuji.  Surely  it  is  one  of  the  weirdest  relics  to  take  in  one's  hand, 
this  memorandum,  the  simple  wording  of  which  but  adds  to  its  horror: 

Item — One  head. 

Item — One  paper  parcel,  and  then  the  signatures  of  the  two  re- 
tainers beneath. 

Another  manuscript  is  also  shown,  in  which  the  Ronin  addressed 
their  departed  lord,  laying  it  upon  his  tomb.  It  is  translated  thus  by 
Mitford: 

"The  fifteenth  year  of  Genroku,  the  twelfth  month,  and  fifteenth 

[17] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

day.  We  have  come  this  day  to  do  homage  here,  forty- 
seven  men  in  all,  from  Oishi  Kuranosuki,  down  to  the 
foot  soldier,  Terasaka  Kichiyemon,  all  cheerfully  about 
to  lay  down  our  lives  on  your  behalf.  We  reverently 
announce  this  to  the  honoured  spirit  of  our  dead  master.  On  the 
fourteenth  day  of  the  third  month  of  last  year  our  honoured  master 
was  pleased  to  attack  Kira-Kotsuki-no-Suke,  for  what  reason  we 
know  not.  Our  honoured  master  put  an  end  to  his  own  life,  but 
Kotsuki-no-Suke  lived.  Although  we  fear  that  after  the  decree  is- 
sued by  the  Government,  this  plot  of  ours  will  be  displeasing  to  our 
master,  still  we  who  have  eaten  of  your  food  could  not  without  blush- 
ing repeat  the  verse,  'Thou  shalt  not  live  under  the  same  heaven  nor 
tread  the  same  earth  with  the  enemy  of  thy  father  or  lord,'  nor  could 
we  have  dared  to  leave  hell  and  present  ourselves  before  you  in 
paradise,  unless  we  had  carried  out  the  vengeance  which  you  began. 
Every  day  that  we  waited  seemed  as  three  autumns  to  us.  Verily 
we  have  trodden  the  snow  for  one  day,  nay  for  two  days,  and  have 
tasted  food  but  once.  The  old  and  decrepit,  the  sick  and  ailing, 
have  come  forth  gladly  to  lay  down  their  lives.  Having  taken 
counsel  together  last  night,  we  have  escorted  my  lord,  Kotsuki-no- 
Suke,  hither  to  your  tomb.  This  dirk  by  which  our  honoured  lord 
set  great  store  last  year,  and  entrusted  to  our  care,  we  now  bring 
back.  If  your  noble  spirit  be  now  present  before  this  tomb,  we  pray 
you  as  a  sign  to  take  the  dirk,  and  striking  the  head  of  your  enemy 
with  it  a  second  time  to  dispel  your  hatred  forever.  This  is  the 
respectful  statement  of  forty -seven  men." 

There    were    forty-seven    Ronin.       Why,  then,    do    forty-eight 

[18] 


Genroku. 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 

tomb-stones   stand   beneath    the    cedars    at   Sengakuji? 

Truly   the  answer  has  caused   tears   to   fall   from   the 

eyes  of  many   a  visiting  pilgrim,    for   the   forty-eighth 

tomb    holds    the   body   of    the    Satsuma    man,    who    in 

an  agony  of  grief  and  remorse  ended  his  life,  and  was  buried  beside 

the  hero,  "whose  body  he  had  scornfully  trampled  upon  in  the  streets 

of  sacred  Kyoto. 

This  history  of  the  Forty-seven  Ronin  is  an  epitome  of  Japanese 
ethics,  for  in  it  is  exemplified  their  feudal  devotion,  their  severe  code 
of  honour,  their  distorted  vision  of  duty  and  fealty  to  a  superior, 
justifying  the  most  lawless  acts.  Thus  the  conduct  of  Kuranosuki 
during  his  wild  year  of  reckless  abandonment,  in  which  he  threw  off 
all  moral  restraint  in  order  to  deceive  his  enemy,  breaking  the  heart 
of  his  faithful  and  devoted  wife,  was  considered  by  his  countrymen 
meritorious  and  a  proof  of  his  devotion.  The  Ukiyo-ye  artists, 
who  loved  to  take  for  models  the  beautiful  denizens  of  the  "Under 
World,"  chose  this  obsession  of  Kuranosuki  as  the  subject  for  many 
of  their  illustrations,  so  that  at  a  first  glance  the  series  might  almost 
be  mistaken  for  scenes  from  the  life  of  the  Yoshiwara. 

Here  and  there,  however,  we  come  across  the  Ronin  engaged 
in  terrific  conflict  with  Kotsuki-no-Suke's  retainers.  Cruel  and  blood- 
thirsty are  the  blades  of  their  relentless  katanas,  which  once  un- 
sheathed must  be  slaked  in  human  blood,  and  their  garments,  slashed 
into  stiletto-like  points  of  inky  blackness,  forming  a  cheveaux  de  frisc 
round  their  fierce  faces,  seem  scintillant  with  the  spirit  of  vendetta. 

In  examining  the  sets  of  impressions,  illustrating  the  popular 
story,  it  is  hard  to  give  preference  to  any  special  artist:  to  choose 

[191 


Genroku. 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

between  the  Utamaro-like  violets  and  greens  of 
Yeisen;  the  rich  dark  tints  and  fine  backgrounds  of 
Kunisada;  the  delicately  massed  detail  of  Toyokuni, 
unlike  the  usual  boldness  of  his  style,  and  the  varied 
sword-play  of  the  versatile  Hiroshige,  set  in  a  frosted,  snowy 
landscape.  Hokusai,  who  abjured  theatrical  subjects  after  break- 
ing away  from  the  tutelage  of  Shunsho,  published  a  series  of  prints 
illustrating  the  famous  vendetta,  but  as  his  great-grandfather  had 
been  a  retainer  of  Kotsuki-no-Suke,  losing  his  life  during  the 
midnight  attack,  the  story  formed  part  of  his  ancestral  history. 
The  series  is  signed  Kako,  and  the  sweeping  lines  and  contours 
of  the  female  figures  show  the  Kiyonaga  influence.  Yellow  prepon- 
derates, outlining  the  buildings  and  long  interior  vistas,  and  the 
impressions  are  framed  with  a  singular  convention  of  Hokusai  at 
that  period,  drifting  cloud  effects  in  delicate  pink.  Utamaro  also 
illustrated  the  story,  substituting  for  the  Ronin  the  forms  of  women, 
a  favourite  conceit  of  the  artist  of  beauty. 

This  digression  in  favour  of  the  masters  of  the  Popular  School 
has  carried  us  over  a  hundred  years,  and  we  must  return  to  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  Moronobu  illustrated  the  carnival  of 
Genroku,  but  toward  the  end  of  the  century,  under  the  domination 
of  a  Shogun  who  combined  the  qualities  of  extravagance  and  prof- 
ligacy with  the  delirious  superstition  of  a  Louis  the  Eleventh,  a 
period  of  unbridled  license  set  in.  The  military  men,  who  were 
the  nation's  models,  forgot  their  fine  traditions  and  fell  from  their 
estate,  so  that  the  latter  manners  and  customs  of  Genroku  became  a 
by-word.      Then     followed     a     puritanical     reaction.      Under     the 

[20] 


Genroku. 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

eighth  Shogun,  the  knights  were  restricted  from  attend- 
ing the  theatre,  just  coming  into  favour,  and  the  looser 
haunts  of  pleasure  were  strictly  under  ban.  The 
Ukiyo-ye  print,  being  the  medium  for  illustrating  these 
joys  and  pleasures,  forbidden  to  the  great,  but  still  indulged  in  by 
the  people,  was  strictly  condemned,  and  to  this  day  the  aristocracy 
of  Japan  accord  but  grudging  and  unwilling  recognition  to  the  merits 
of  the  masters  of  Ukiyo-ye,  the  old  caste  prejudice  still  blinding  their 
artistic  sense. 

At  this  stage  Ukiyo-ye  broke  into  rival  schools,  the  founders  of 
both  belonging  to  the  academy  of  Hishigawa  Moronobu.  The  leader 
of  the  first,  the  school  of  painting,  was  Miyagawa  Choshun,  who  in 
order  to  preserve  aristocratic  patronage  and  praise,  eschewed  the  use 
of  the  printing-block,  still  taking  his  subjects  from  the  "floating  world," 
and  so  being  in  one  sense  at  unity  with  the  other  branch,  that  of  print- 
ing founded  by  Kiyonobu,  the  first  master  of  the  great  Torii  School. 
As  the  Print  artists  are  our  subject  matter  we  cannot  follow  the  other 
branch  of  Ukiyo-ye,  founded  by  Miyagawa  Choshun,  but  leaving  the 
atelier  of  the  painters,  we  must  devote  ourselves  to  the  fortunes  of  the 
Torii  School,  the  laboratory  of  the  Ukiyo-ye  print,  working  parallel 
with  the  pictorial  school  for  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  first  sheets  of  Kiyonobu  (about  1  710),  the  founder  of  the 
Torii  School,  were  printed  in  ink  from  a  single  block.  Part  of  the 
edition  would  be  issued  in  this  uncoloured  form,  the  rest  being 
coloured  by  hand.  The  colours  most  used  were  olive  and  orange, 
these  prints  being  called  Tan-ye,  whilst  those  in  ink  were  named 
Sumi-ye.      Urishi-ye    (lacquer  pictures),   was   the   generic   term   for 

[21] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

hand-painted  prints.      Beni-ye   (literally  red  pictures), 

followed  the  Urishi-yc.     They  were  printed  in  two  tones, 

rose   and   pale   green,    enforced   by   black,    a   harmony 

exquisite  in  delicacy.      The  use  of  the  multiple  colour 

blocks  gave  rise  to  the  title  Nishil^i-ye,  or  brocade  paintings.      The 

national  mania  for  the  stage  induced  Kiyonobu  and  his  followers  to 

take  for  their  subjects  popular  actors,  and  the  theatrical  poster  may 

be  said  to  date  from  the  decade  following  Genroku. 

Later  in  the  century  the  process  of  colour-printing  by  the  substi- 
tution of  blocks  for  flat  colours  was  gradually  evolved,  and  to  no 
special  artist  or  engraver  can  the  credit  be  given,  for  all  contributed 
to  its  development,  though  the  genius  of  Suzuki  Harunobu  drew 
to  a  focus  in  1  765  the  achievements  of  his  brother  artists,  and  it 
was  he  who  solved  the  problem  of  uniting  the  skill  of  the  engraver 
with  the  full  palette  of  Miyagawa  Choshun  and  his  follower  Shunsui, 
thus  uniting  the  two  branches  of  Ukiyo-ye  art. 

The  Popular  School,  however,  is  bound  up  with  print  develop- 
ment. Japanese  book  illustration  and  single-sheet  printing  revo- 
lutionized the  world's  art.  The  great  connoisseurs  of  colour  tell 
us  that  nowhere  else  is  anything  like  it,  so  rich  and  so  full,  that  a  print 
comes  to  have  every  quality  of  a  complete  painting. 

The  other  leaders  of  the  Torii  School  were  Torii  Kiyomasu 
and  Okumura  Masanobu,  namesake  of  the  great  founder  of  Kano, 
who  must  not  be  confounded  with  the  later  artist  of  the  same  name, 
belonging  to  the  school  of  Kitao.  Masanobu  deserves  special  mention, 
for  his  style  being  chiefly  pictorial,  and  his  subjects  not  confined  to 
the  stage,  he  formed  a  link  between  the  painter's  atelier  and  his  own. 

[22J 


An  illustration  from 
"  The   Occupations  of 

Women." 
By  Suzuki  Harunobu, 

who,  though  a 

worker  in  prints,  styled 

himself 

"Yamato  Yeshi,* 

the  title  assigned  to  the 

great  court  painters. 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 


He  realized  that  book  prints  rather  than  actor  prints 
ought  to  be  the  most  potent  force  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

Shigenaga  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Masanobu, 
but  his  fame  is  eclipsed  by  that  of  his  great  pupil 
Harunobu,  whose  genius  was  displayed  not  only  by  the  introduction 
of  new  colours  upon  the  printing-block,  but  by  his  schemes  of  ar- 
rangement, juxtaposition  of  shades,  and  marvellous  handling  of  the 
areas  between  the  printed  outlines.  This  restriction  of  measured 
spaces  does  not  cramp  the  painter's  individuality  and  sweep  of  brush ; 
rather,  they  set  him  free  to  concentrate  his  genius  upon  blended  har- 
monies, and  interwoven  schemes  of  colour,  and  to  surrender  himself 
to  the  intoxication  of  the  palette. 

Suzuki  Harunobu  revolutionized  the  status  of  the  Popular 
School,  pronouncing  this  dictum,  "Though  I  am  a  worker  in  prints 
I  shall  hereafter  style  myself  ' Yamato  Yeishi,' "  the  title  assumed  by 
the  ancient  court  painters.  A  national  painter  he  declared  himself, 
let  him  deny  who  dare,  working  through  the  new  medium  of  the 
despised  and  ostracized  Ukiyo-ye  print  from  which  he  determined 
to  remove  the  stigma  of  vulgarity .. 

Now  we  see  a  strange  transposition  in  the  aims  of  the  popular 
artists.  Harunobu,  though  a  pupil  of  Shigenaga,  the  printer,  took 
for  his  models  the  subjects  of  the  painter  Shunsui,  successor  to 
Miyagawa  Choshun,  and  by  rejecting  stage  motives  discarded  the 
Torii  tradition.  From  Shunsui,  Harunobu  borrowed  the  ineffable 
grace  and  refinement  which  breathe  from  the  forms  of  his  women, 
from  the  painter  he  stole  colour  harmonies  and  designs  with  land- 
scape backgrounds,   which  the  Torii   School  had  hitherto  ignored. 

[23] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 

The  introduction  of  genre  painting,  though  attributed 
by  Walter  Pater  to  Giorgione,  applies  equally  to  the 
work  of  Harunobu  and  his  follower  Koriusai.  "He 
is  the  inventor  of  genre,  of  those  easily  movable  pictures 
which  serve  neither  for  uses  of  devotion  nor  of  allegorical  or  historical 
teaching:  little  groups  of  real  men  and  women,  amid  congruous 
furniture  or  landscape,  morsels  of  actual  life,  conversation  or  music 
or  play,  refined  upon  and  idealized  till  they  come  to  seem  like  glimpses 
of  life  from  afar.  People  may  move  those  spaces  of  cunningly  blent 
colour  readily  and  take  them  with  them  where  they  go,  like  a  poem 
in  manuscript,  or  a  musical  instrument,  to  be  used  at  will  as  a  means 
of  self-education,  stimulus  or  solace,  coming  like  an  animated  pres- 
ence into  one's  cabinet,  and  like  persons  live  with  us  for  a  day  or  a 
lifetime."  Must  not  such  an  influence  have  descended  upon 
Whistler  when,  saturated  with  the  atmosphere  of  Hiroshige,  he 
imagined  that  most  beautiful  of  his  "Nocturnes"  described  by 
Theodore  Child  as  "a  vision  in  form  and  colour,  in  luminous  air,  a 
Japanese  fancy  realized  on  the  banks  of  the  gray  Thames"? 


124] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


The  School  of  Torii. 

The  Printers"  Branch  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

^■Ap^  HE  Torii  School  was  pre-eminently  the  exponent  of  the 

£  drama.      It  was  bound  up  with  stage  development  and 

^S  ministered  to  the  emotional  temperament  of  the  nation; 
leading  in  what  may  be  considered  a  national  obsession, 
a  mania  for  actors  and  actor-prints. 

A  fascinating  subject  is  this  century  of  dramatic  evolution  fostered 
by  the  printers'  branch  of  the  Popular  School.  The  actor  had 
been  consigned,  in  dark  feudal  days,  to  the  lowest  rung  in  the  ladder 
of  caste,  ranking  next  to  the  outcast  (Eta),  as  in  early  English  days 
the  strolling  player  was  associated  with  tinkers  and  the  other  vagrant 
population. 

The  No  Kagura  and  lyric  drama, — suggesting  the  mediaeval 
and  passion  plays  of  Europe, — prefigured  the  modern  drama  in 
Japan,  but  the  immediate  precursor  of  the  present  theatre  was  the 
Puppet  Show,  a  Japanese  apotheosis  of  our  Marionette  performances. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Toyokuni,  who  M.  Louis  Gonse  declared 
has  carried  further  than  any  one  the  power  of  mimetic  art,  and  with 
whose  theatrical  scenes  we  are  most  familiar,  began  his  career  as 
a  maker  of  dolls,  and  these  puppets  were  eagerly  sought  for  as 
works  of  art. 

If  the  aphorism  "not  to  go  to  the  theatre  is  like  making  one's 
toilet  without  a  mirror,"  be  true,  then  the  Japanese  are  justified  in 
their  national  stage  passion,  which  overshadows  the  love  of  any 
other  amusement.      Taking  the  phrase  literally,  it  was  to  the  persons 

[25] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 


of  the  actors,  and  the  printers  who  spread  their  pictures 

The  broadcast,   that  the  people  owed  the  aesthetic  wonders 

VoriL         °f  t^""  costume-      The  designers  were  also  artists,   as 

instanced  by  Hishigawa  Moronobu,  the  Kyoto  designer 

and  Yedo  embroiderer,  the  printer  and  painter,  illustrator  of  books 

and  originator  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

Enthusiasm  for  the  portraits  of  actors,  fostered  by  the  Torii 
printers  from  the  foundation  of  the  school  by  Kiyonobu,  about  1710, 
hastened  no  doubt  the  development  of  colour-printing.  As  early 
as  Genroku,  the  portrait  of  Danjuro,  the  second  of  the  great  dynasty 
of  actors,  who  by  their  genius  helped  to  brighten  the  fortunes  of  the 
playhouse,  was  sold  for  five  cash,  in  the  streets  of  the  capital. 

The  combined  genius  of  the  artists,  engravers  and  printers  of 
Ukiyo-ye  evolved  and  perfected  the  use  of  the  multiple  colour-block. 
Toward  the  middle  of  the  century,  under  the  waning  powers  of  Torii 
Kiyomitsu,  successor  to  Kiyonobu,  the  school  seemed  sinking  into 
oblivion,  for  Harunobu,  its  rightful  exponent,  filled  with  visions  of 
ethereal  refinement,  scorned  the  theatrical  arena.  When  most  needed, 
however,  a  prophet  arose  in  the  person  of  Shunsho,  the  painter,  the 
pupil  of  Shunsui  and  master  of  Hokusai,  thus  completing  the  trans- 
formation begun  by  Harunobu.  The  great  scions  of  the  rival 
branches  of  Ukiyo-ye,  printing  and  painting,  stepped  into  each  other's 
places  and  bridged  the  chasm,  which  threatened  the  unity  of  the 
Popular  School. 

Both  branches  were  united,  however,  in  the  use  of  the  multiple 
colour-blocks,  but  although  Shunsho  followed  Harunobu's  experi- 
ments in  colouring,  varying  his  actor  designs  with  domestic  scenes  and 

[26] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 


book     illustrations,     Harunobu     resolutely     refused    to 
portray  the  life  of  the  stage,  and  in  this  determination  The 

he  was  followed  by  his  pupil  and  successor,  Koriusai.  Torii. 

About  the  year  1  765,  the  art  of  printing  colours, 
by  the  use  of  individual  blocks,  technically  called  chromo-xylography, 
was  perfected.  It  is  an  interesting  reflection,  from  the  standpoint 
of  Buddhism, — which  teaches  that  in  the  fullness  of  time,  the  great 
masters  in  religion,  art  and  learning  become  reincarnated  upon  earth, 
for  the  benefit  of  humanity,  that  at  this  period  Hokusai  was  born, 
the  crowning  glory  and  master  of  Ukiyo-ye.  Had  he  appeared 
earlier  in  the  century,  his  genius  might  have  been  diverted  to  the 
technical  development  of  printing,  and  the  world  thus  been  the  loser 
of  his  creative  flights. 

Professor  Fenollosa  beautifully  defines  the  inception  of  the 
Ukiyo-ye  print  as  "the  meeting  of  two  wonderfully  sympathetic 
surfaces, — the  un-sandpapered  grain  of  the  cherry-wood  block,  and 
a  mesh  in  the  paper,  of  little  pulsating  vegetable  tentacles.  Upon 
the  one,  colour  can  be  laid  almost  dry,  and  to  the  other  it  may  be 
transferred  by  a  delicacy  of  personal  touch  that  leaves  only  a  trace 
of  tint  balancing  lightly  upon  the  tips  of  the  fibres.  And  from  the 
interstices  of  these  printed  tips,  the  whole  luminous  heart  of  the 
paper  wells  up  from  within,  diluting  the  pigment  with  a  soft  golden 
sunshine.  In  the  Japanese  print  we  have  flatness  combined  with 
vibration." 

To  the  connoisseur,  one  of  the  most  important  considerations, 
scarcely  secondary  to  that  of  colouring,  in  the  selection  of  Ukiyo-ye 
gems,  is  this  vibratory  quality,  depending  equally  upon  the  texture 

[27] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


of  the  paper  and  the  magnetic  pressure  of  the  master 
The  printer's    fingers.      This    characteristic    seems    to    have 

Torii.  vanished  from  the  modern  print,  and  cannot  be  imitated, 
though  the  enthusiasm  for  fine  specimens  has  flooded 
the  market  with  spurious  antiques,  deceptive  to  the  uninitiated.  In 
the  exquisite  reproductions  of  the  early  Ukiyo-ye  prints  and  paint- 
ings now  being  issued, — though  a  joy  to  the  student  unable  to  ac- 
quaint himself  with  the  originals, — this  ineffable  effect  of  vibration 
is  lost,  probably  owing  to  the  substitution  of  a  less  sympathetic  medium 
than  the  luminous  vehicle  of  the  early  impressions. 

The  actual  process  of  wood-cutting  seems  a  simple  art,  but  a 
close  study  of  the  making  of  prints  will  show  the  consummate  skill 
required  to  produce  them.  The  artist's  design  was  transferred  by 
tracing  paper,  then  pasted  on  to  the  face  of  the  wood  block,  and 
the  white  space  hollowed  out  with  a  knife  and  small  gouges.  After 
the  block  had  been  inked,  a  sheet  of  damp  paper  was  laid  upon  it, 
and  the  back  of  the  paper  was  then  rubbed  with  a  flat  rubber  till 
the  impression  was  uniformly  transferred.  Where  more  than  one 
block  was  employed,  as  in  colour-printing,  the  subsequent  impressions 
were  registered  by  marks  made  at  the  corners  of  the  paper.  The 
colouring  matter  laid  upon  these  early  blocks  was  extracted  by  mys- 
terious processes  from  sources  unknown  to  the  Western  world,  which, 
alas!  by  supplying  the  Eastern  market  with  cheap  pigments,  led  to 
the  deterioration  of  art  in  this  essential  particular. 

From  1  765  to  1  780  the  school  of  Ukiyo-ye  was  dominated  by 
four  great  artists  and  creators  of  separate  styles:  Harunobu,  suc- 
ceeded  by   Koriusai,    taking    for   motive   the   subjects   of   Shunsui; 

[28] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

Shunsho  of  Katsukawa   (changed  by  Shunsui  from  its 

former  title  of  Miyagawa),  upon  whose  shoulders  had  The 

fallen    the   mantle   of    the   Torii;    Shigemasa,    working        CTorii° 

upon  Shunsho's  lines,  but  breaking  into  a  rival  academy, 

the  Kitao;  Toyoharu,  pupil  of  old  Torii  Toyonobu,  founder  of  the 

school  of  Utagawa,  whose  most  illustrious  pupil  was  Toyokuni,  the 

doll-maker,  and  brother  of  Toyohiro,  Hiroshige's  master.      (Kuni- 

sada,  noted  for  his  backgrounds,  succeeded  Toyokuni,  and  after  the 

death  of  his  master  signed  himself  Toyokuni  the  Second.) 

.  Shunsho  is  considered  one  of  the  greatest  artists  of  Japan,  both 
as  an  inventor  and  powerful  colourist.  M.  Louis  Gonse  says: 
"All  the  collections  of  coloured  prints  which  are  today  the  delight 
of  the  tea-houses;  all  the  fine  compositions  showing  magnificent  land- 
scapes and  sumptuous  interiors;  all  those  figures  of  actors  with  heroic 
gestures  and  impassive  faces  behind  the  grinning  masks,  and  with 
costumes  striking  and  superb, — came  originally  from  the  atelier  of 
Katsukawa  Shunsho,  who  had  for  a  time  the  monopoly  of  them." 
While  the  Torii  artists  were  beguiling  the  Yedo  populace  with  the- 
atrical portraiture,  and  aiding  the  growing  tendency  toward  cos- 
mopolitanism by  issuing  printed  albums,  books  of  travel  and  encyclo- 
pedias, art  was  also  expanding  at  the  ancient  capital,  Kyoto. 
Sukenobu,  the  prolific  artist,  was  bringing  out  beautifully  illustrated 
books,  and  Okio,  from  sketching  on  the  earth  with  bamboo  sticks, 
while  following  his  father  and  mother  to  their  work  in  the  fields, 
had  risen  to  be  the  great  founder  of  the  Maruyama  school  of  paint- 
ing, and  the  Shijo  or  naturalistic  school  was  named  from  the  street 
in  which  was  the  studio  of  the  master. 

[29] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


The  Popular  School,   aided  by  Okio,   effected  a 
The  revolution   in   the   laws  of  painting   at  Kyoto,    for   the 

Torii.  artists  forsook  their  academic  methods,  painting  birds, 
flowers,  grass,  quadrupeds,  insects  and  fishes  from 
nature.  Okio's  name  ranks  high  among  the  great  masters  of  Japan- 
ese art,  of  whom  so  many  fanciful  legends  are  told.  The  charming 
artist  with  brush  and  pen,  John  La  Farge,  says :  "As .  the  fruit 
painted  by  the  Greek  deceived  the  birds,  and  the  curtain  painted 
by  the  Greek  painter  deceived  his  fellow-artist,  so  the  horses  of 
Kanaoka  have  escaped  from  their  kakemonos,  and  the  tigers  sculp- 
tured in  the  lattices  of  temples  have  been  known  to  descend  at  night 
and  rend  one  another  in  the  courtyards." 

Then  the  story  is  told  of  a  moonlight  picture,  which,  when  un- 
rolled, filled  a  dark  room  with  light.  A  pretty  legend  of  Tanyu, 
the  great  Kano  artist,  and  the  crabs  at  Enryaku  Temple,  is  given  by 
Adachi  Kinnotsuke.  Upon  one  panel  of  the  fusuma,  or  paper 
screen,  is  seen  a  crab,  marvellously  realistic,  only  with  claws  in- 
visible. On  the  other  panels  the  artist  had  painted  its  companions, 
and  at  the  bidding  of  his  patron  furnished  them  with  claws.  "Never- 
theless," the  master  declared,  "I  warn  you  that  if  I  give  these  crabs 
claws  they  will  surely  crawl  out  of  the  picture."  As  the  visitor 
glances  from  the  wonderful  counterfeit  crab  to  the  four  empty  panels 
beside  it,  he  knows  the  old  master  had  only  spoken  the  truth. 

And  so  with  Okio.  He  breathed  into  his  pictures  the  breath 
of  life.  His  animals  live,  and  his  flights  of  storks  swoop  across  the 
great  kakemonos,  each  bird  with  an  individuality  of  its  own,  though 
one  of   a   multitude   of  flying   companions.      To   view   Okio   aright, 

[30] 


Under  the  Cherry 

Blooms. 

By  Kiyonaga,  the 

regenerator  of  Torii, 

whose  classic  figures 

recall,  in  their  dignity 

and  simplicity,  the 

methods  of  the  early 

Italian  masters. 


* 

&1 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


we  should  see  him  at  home  in  his  own  environment,  not 
in  Europe,   where  so  many  copies  of  his  masterpieces  The 

abound.      John   La    Farge   gives   us   a    glimpse   of   an  Tom. 

Okio,  fitly  set,  framed  in  oriental  magnificence,  in  the 
Temple  of  Iyemitsu  at  Nikko:  "All  within  was  quiet,  in  a  golden 
splendour.  Through  the  small  openings  of  the  black  and  gold  grat- 
ings a  faint  light  from  below  left  all  the  golden  interior  in  a  summer 
shade,  within  which  glittered  on  golden  tables  the  golden  utensils  of 
the  Buddhist  ceremonial.  The  narrow  passage  makes  the  center, 
through  whose  returning  walls  project,  in  a  curious  refinement  of 
invention,  the  golden  eaves  of  the  inner  building  beyond.  Gratings, 
which  were  carved,  and  gilded  trellises  of  exquisite  design,  gave  a 
cool,  uncertain  light.  An  exquisite  feeling  of  gentle  solemnity  filled 
the  place.  In  the  corridor  facing  the  mountain  and  the  tomb,  a 
picture  hangs  on  the  wall.  It  is  by  Okio.  Kuwannon,  the  Com- 
passionate, sits  in  contemplation  beside  the  descending  stream  of 
life." 

About  I  775  arose  a  legitimate  successor  to  the  school  of  Torii  in 
the  adopted  son  of  Kiyomitsu,  Kiyonaga.  He  discarded  the  theatrical 
tradition  of  his  school,  but  the  boldness  of  his  drawing  was  foreign  to 
the  style  of  Harunobu.  "His  brush  had  a  superhuman  power  and 
swing."  He  rivalled  the  three  great  masters,  Koriusai,  Shigemasa, 
founder  of  Kitao,  and  Toyoharu  of  Utagawa,  and  the  masters  of 
Ukiyo-ye,  forsaking  their  individual  predilections,  flocked  to  his 
studio. 

The  simplicity  and  dignity  of  the  early  Italian  masters,  sought 
after  and  adored  by  the  pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood,  their  noble  lines 

[31] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


and    contours,    are    again    realized    in    the    panels    of 
The  Kiyonaga.       Professor    Fenollosa    said    that    "classic" 

«j*orjj  is  the  instinctive  term  to  apply  to  Kiyonaga,  and  that 

his  figures  at  their  best  may  be  placed  side  by  side  with 
Greek  vase  painting.  Ideally  beautiful  is  the  fall  of  his  drapery, 
determining  the  lines  of  the  figure  in  the  fewest  possible  folds.  In 
indoor  scenes  he  almost  rivalled  Harunobu,  but  he  loved  best  to  paint 
in  the  open  air.  In  imagination  we  see  Kiyonaga,  the  lover  of  beauty, 
gazing  at  the  wealth  of  lotus  blooms  which  fill  the  moats  of  feudal 
Yedo,  and  in  the  crucible  of  his  fancy  transmuting  them  into  the 
forms  of  women.  The  lotus,  of  all  flowers,  has  the  deepest  art 
significance,  and  is  the  oldest  motive.  The  author  of  "Greek  Lines," 
Henry  Van  Brunt,  said:  "The  lotus  perpetually  occurs  in  oriental 
mythology  as  the  sublime  and  hallowed  symbol  of  the  productive 
power  of  nature.  The  Hindu  and  the  Egyptian  instinctively  ele- 
vated it  to  the  highest  and  most  cherished  place  in  their  Pantheons." 

It  is  the  flower  of  religion,  of  beauty,  and  of  love.  From  the 
ocean  the  Hindu  Aphrodite,  Lachsmi,  ascended.  Isis  in  Egypt 
reigned,  crowned  by  the  lotus,  and  there  the  tender,  flowing  lines  be- 
came sublime,  monumental,  fitted  to  symbolize  death  and  eternal  re- 
pose. In  Japan  its  joyous  curves  represent  life,  immortality,  and, 
delicately  sensuous,  they  conjure  up  visions  of  ideal  beauty.  The 
lotus,  sweetly  blooming  before  the  artist's  eye,  expanded  into  a  vision 
of  fair  women,  whose  lissom  forms  he  clothed  with  swirls  of  drapery. 
And  the  women  of  Japan,  enamoured  of  these  enchanting  poses, 
endeavoured  to  assume  the  curves  of  Kiyonaga,  sheathing  their  deli- 
cate limbs  in  silken  draperies,  and  simulating  in  their  enchanting  slen- 

(32] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


derness  the  stems  of  flowers — or,  to  borrow  a  beautiful 

simile  from  Lafcadio  Hearn,   "looking  like  a  beautiful         The 

silver  moth  robed  in  the  folding  of  its  own  wings."  Tom. 

It    is    said    that    every    Japanese    actor-print    was 
a  potential  poster,   and,   alas!    the   fashion-plate   is  endeavouring   to 
mold  itself  upon  the  most  exaggerated  type  of  the  degenerate  offspring 
of  the  genius  of  the  Torii  School. 

The  Japanese  woman,  with  her  untrammelled  form  arrayed  in 
draperies  designed  by  consummate  artists,  may  dare  to  follow  classic 
Kiyonaga — youth  and  grace  may  acquire  oriental  plasticity.  But 
let  fashion  rest  there.  Pitiful  and  ludicrously  futile  is  the  effort  of 
embonpoint  to  attain  sinuosity.  Lines  of  beauty  cannot  be  manu- 
factured; as  well  imagine  the  slender  stem  of  the  lotus  encircled  in 
steel,  its  curves  determined  by  a  multiplicity  of  wires  and  tapes. 

Although  the  leaders  of  Ukiyo-ye  followed  so  closely  in  the 
footsteps  of  Kiyonaga  that  his  type  of  face  stamps  the  years  from 
1  780  to  1  790,  yet  his  style  was  too  classic,  too  noble  to  suit  the 
taste  of  the  Yedo  populace,  which,  in  its  thirst  for  realism,  had 
become  depraved.  Rather  than  lower  his  standard  he  chose  to 
resign,  leaving  the  field  to  his  followers,  Yeishi,  Utamaro  and 
Toyokuni.  These  masters,  at  first  as  dignified  in  their  method  as 
Kiyonaga,  now  yielded  to  the  public  craze  for  the  exaggerated,  the 
abnormal  and  grotesque.  It  was  an  apotheosis  of  ugliness  and  vul- 
garity, a  "Zolaism  in  prints. " 

Coarse  pictures  of  actors,  masquerading  in  female  dress,  replaced 
the  charming  little  domestic  women  of  Harunobu  and  Koriusai, — 
the  ladies   of   Japan,    as   we   see   them    in   reality, — and    the   noble 

[33] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

figures  of  Kiyonaga.  Gigantic  courtesans,  bizarre  and 
The  fantastic,  with  delirious  headgear,  took  the  place  of 
Torii.       Shunsho's    fair    children    of    the    "Underworld,"    who, 

in  the  modesty  of  their  mien,  seemed  to  belie  the  calling 
they  so  often  deplored,  as  the  songs  of  the  Yoshiwara  testify, 
plaintively  sung  to  the  syncopated  rhythm  of  the  samisen,  tinkling 
through  the  summer  nights. 

The  school  of  Ukiyo-ye  was  sinking  into  obscurity,  when 
Hiroshige  and  Hokusai  appeared,  two  children  of  light,  dispersing 
the  gloom:  Hiroshige,  the  versatile  painter,  lover  of  landscape  and 
ethereal  artist  of  snow  and  mist;  Hokusai,  the  prophet,  and  re- 
generator of  Ukiyo-ye.  He  was  the  artisan-artist,  in  the  land  which 
recognizes  no  inferior  arts,  and  the  Mang-wa,  consisting  of  studies 
as  spontaneously  thrown  off  as  those  in  the  sketch-book  Giorgione 
carried  in  his  girdle,  was  published  for  the  use  of  workmen.  Living 
in  simplicity  and  poverty  he  gave  his  life  to  the  people,  and  the  im- 
pression of  his  genius  is  stamped  upon  their  work.  A  true  handi- 
craftsman was  Hokusai, — the  Mang-wa  a  dictionary  of  the  arts 
and  crafts,  as  well  as  the  inspired  vehicle  of  art.  In  it  "balance, 
rhythm  and  harmony,  the  modes  in  which  Beauty  is  revealed,  both  in 
nature  and  art,"  were  manifested, — for  he  was  a  vital  artist,  laying 
bare  the  enigma  of  evolution,  and  the  mystery  of  creation. 


F34] 


r 


^m 


Kt 


The  Aclor  Kikugoro. 

By  Toyokuni  1, 

the   great 

Actor-Designer  and 

Master  of  Mimetic 

Art. 

f 


tl 


@ 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


Utamaro. 

Le  Fondateur  de  L'Ecole  de  la  Vie. 

^9w^  HE  above  title  is  quoted  from  the  work  of  M.  Edmond 

LW        de   Goncourt,    "as   one   having   authority,"    there   being 

^^^^  many    claimants    to    the    leadership    of    Ukiyo-ye    (the 

floating  world),  the  Popular  School  of  Japanese  Art. 

In  the  life  of  Utamaro,  M.  de  Goncourt,  in  exquisite  language  and 

with  analytical  skill,  has  interpreted  for  us  the  meaning  of  that  form 

of  Japanese  art  which  found  its  chief  expression  in  the  use  of  the 

wooden  block  for  colour-printing,  and  to  glance  appreciatively  at  the 

work  of  both  artist  and  author  is  the  motive  of  this  sketch. 

The  Ukiyo-ye  print,  despised  by  the  haughty  Japanese  aris- 
tocracy, became  the  vehicle  of  art  for  the  common  people  of  Japan, 
and  the  names  of  the  artists  who  aided  in  its  development  are  fa- 
miliarly quoted  in  every  studio,  whilst  the  classic  painters  of  "Tosa" 
and  "Kano"  are  comparatively  rarely  mentioned.  The  consensus 
of  opinion  in  Japan  during  the  lifetime  of  Utamaro  agrees  with  the 
verdict  of  M.  de  Goncourt.  No  artist  was  more  popular.-  His 
atelier  was  besieged  by  editors  giving  orders,  and  in  the  country  his 
works  were  eagerly  sought  after,  when  those  of  his  famous  con- 
temporary, Toyokuni,  were  but  little  known.  In  the  "Barque  of 
Utamaro,"  a  famous  surimono,  the  title  of  which  forms  a  pretty  play 
upon  words,  maro  being  the  Japanese  for  vessel,  the  seal  of  supremacy 
is  set  upon  the  artist.  Here  he  is  represented  as  holding  court  in  a 
gaily  decorated  barge,  surrounded  by  a  bevy  of  beauty  paying 
homage  to  his  genius.      He  was  essentially  the  painter  of  women, 

[351 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

and  though  M.  de  Goncourt  sets  forth  his  astonishing 
versatility,  he  yet  entitles  his  work,  "Outamaro,  le 
Peintre  des  Maisons  Vertes." 

The  beautiful  inhabitants  of  these  celebrated 
houses  of  the  Yoshiwara  (the  flower  quarter)  of  Yedo  had  ever 
been  sought  as  models  by  the  artists  of  Ukiyo-ye.  But,  alas!  the 
sensuous  poetic-artistic  temperament  of  Utamaro,  undisciplined  and 
uncontrolled,  led  to  his  undoing.  The  pleasure-loving  artist,  recog- 
nizing no  creed  but  the  worship  of  beauty,  refusing  to  be  bound  by 
any  fetters  but  those  of  fancy,  fell  at  last  into  the  lowest  depths 
of  degradation,  physical  and  moral.  And  this  debasement  of  their 
leader,  tainting  his  art,  was  reflected  in  the  work  of  his  brother 
artists  and  hastened  the  decadence  of  the  Popular  School. 

To  understand  the  influences  which  sapped  the  self-control  of 
the  gay  and  beauty-loving  Utamaro,  we  have  only  to  glance  at  the 
text  by  Jipensha  Ikkou  of  "The  Annuary  of  the  Green  Houses," 
two  volumes  of  prints  in  colour,  so  marvellously  beautiful  that  they 
caused  the  artist  to  be  recognized  as,  in  a  sense,  the  official  painter 
of  the  Yoshiwara.  The  writer  thus  sums  up  the  fatal  fascination 
of  the  inmates,  the  courtesans  of  highest  rank,  who  alone  were  de- 
picted by  Utamaro.  "The  daughters  of  the  Yoshiwara  are  brought 
up  like  princesses.  From  infancy  they  are  given  the  most  finished 
education"  (from  the  Japanese  standpoint,  be  it  observed).  "They 
are  taught  reading,  writing,  art,  music,  le  the,  le  parfum"  (in  the  game 
of  scents,  the  art  is  to  guess  by  inhaling  the  odour  of  burning  perfumes 
the  secret  of  their  composition).  "Their  entourage  is  that  of  prin- 
cesses, brought  up  in  the  seclusion  of  the  palace.      Coming  from 

[36] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

all  parts  of  the  'Land  of  the  Rising  Sun,'  they  must 
discard  their  individual  patois  and  learn  to  speak  the 
archaic  tongue,  slightly  modified,  the  poetical,  the  noble 
language  of  the  court  from  the  seventeenth  to  the  nine- 
teenth century." 

In  the  home  of  the  celebrated  Tsutaya  Juzabro,  who  edited  the 
most  beautiful  books  of  the  time,  in  his  early  impressionable  youth 
lived  Utamaro,  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  great  gate  leading  to 
the  Yoshiwara.  By  day  he  devoted  himself  to  his  art,  by  night  he 
surrendered  himself  to  the  fatal  enchantment  of  that  brilliant  "Under- 
world," until,  like  Merlin,  ensnared  by  Vivian,  with  the  charm  of 
"woven  paces  and  waving  hands,"  his  art  sapped  by  excesses,  he 
became  "lost  to  life,  and  use,  and  name,  and  fame." 

Let  us,  forgetting  this  sad  sequel,  glance  at  the  works  which 
testify  to  the  life  of  high  artistic  endeavour  led  by  Utamaro  in  the 
early  part  of  his  career.  In  the  preface  to  the  "Yehon  Moushi 
Yerabi"  (Chosen  Insects),  the  master  of  Utamaro,  Toriyama  Seki- 
yen,  throws  so  charming  a  sidelight  upon  the  youth  of  the  artist, 
that  the  temptation  to  quote  is  irresistible.  The  value  of  these  Japan- 
ese prefaces  to  the  world,  to  workers  in  every  field,  is  incalculable. 
At  the  outset  of  his  work,  M.  de  Goncourt  alludes  to  the  well-known 
preface  of  Hokusai  in  the  "Fugaku  Hiak'kei,"  and  doubtless  fortified 
himself  by  the  stimulating  example  of  the  old  master,  when  undertak- 
ing at  the  age  of  seventy  the  great  task  of  presenting  to  the  Western 
world,  under  the  title  of  "L'Art  Japonais,"  a  history  of  five  noted 
painters,  besides  that  of  other  artists  in  bronze  and  lacquer,  pottery 
and  iron — artists  in  a  land  where  the  terms  artist  and  artisan  are  in- 

[37] 

L79RB3 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

terchangeable,    the   cnly    country   where   art   industrial 
almost  always  touches  grand  art. 

The  translator  of  the  preface  of  Sekiyen  is  grate- 
fully referred  to  by  M.  de  Goncourt  as  ?T intelligent, 
le  savant,  l'aimable  M.  Hyashi."  It  may  be  considered  a  revolution- 
ary manifesto  of  the  Profane  School,  the  school  of  real  life,  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  hierarchical  Buddhist  academies  of  Kano  and  Tosa, 
which  had  become  stultified  by  tradition  and  stifled  by  conventional 
observances. 

"Preface  ecrite  par  Toriyama  Sekiyen,  le  maitre  d'Outamaro, 
celebrant  le  naturisme  (sortit  du  cceur)  de  son  petit,  de  son  cher  eleve 
Outa."  "Reproduire  la  vie  par  le  cceur,  et  en  dessiner  la  structure 
au  pinceau,  est  la  loi  de  la  peinture.  L'etude  que  vient  de  publier 
maintenant,  mon  eleve  Outamaro,  reproduit  la  vie  meme  du  monde 
des  insectes.  C'est  la  vraie  peinture  du ,  cceur.  Et  quand  je  me 
souviens  d'autrefois,  je  me  rappelle  que  des  l'enfance,  le  petit  Outa, 
observait  le  plus  infinie  detail  des  choses.  Ainsi  a  l'automne,  quand 
il  etait  dans  le  jardin,  il  se  mettait  en  chasse  des  insectes,  et  que  ce 
soit  un  criquet  ou  une  sauterelle,  avait-il  fait  une  prise,  il  gardait  le 
bestiole  dans  sa  main  et  s'amusait  a  l'etudier.  Et  combien  de  fois 
je  l'ai  gronde  dans  l'apprehension  qu'il  ne  prenne  l'habitude,  de 
donner  la  mort  a  des  etres  vivants.  Maintenant  qu'il  a  acquis  son 
grand  talent  du  pinceau,  il  fait  de  ces  etudes  d' insectes,  la  gloire  de 
sa  profession." 

The  enthusiastic  master  of  le  petil  Outa  proceeds  to  rhapsodize 
upon  his  pupil's  genius  and  intimate  knowledge  of  the  structure  of 
insects.     "He  makes  us  hear,"  he  says,  "the  shrilling  of  the  taman- 

1381 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


oushi,"    the    cicada    of    Japan,    whose    endless    peevish 
twanging  upon  one  string  forms  an  underlying  accom- 
paniment to  the  harmonies  of  long  summer  days.     "He 
borrows  the  light  weapons  of  the  grasshopper  for  making 
war;  he  exhibits  the  dexterity  of  the  earthworm,  boring  the  soil  under 
the  foundations  of  old  buildings ;  he  penetrates  the  mysteries  of  nature 
in  the  groping  of  the  larvae,  in  the  lighting  of  his  path  by  the  glow- 
worm, and  he  ends  by  disentangling  the  end  of  the  thread  of  the 
spider's  web." 

The  colour-printing  of  these  insects  is  a  miracle  of  art,  says  M. 
de  Goncourt,  and  there  is  nothing  comparable  to  it  in  Europe.  Of 
the  methods  by  which  these  colour  prints  are  brought  to  such  a 
height  of  perfection,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  speak  authoritatively. 
They  are  the  result  of  a  threefold  combination:  of  a  paper  marvel- 
lously prepared  from  the  bark  of  the  shrub,  Kozo,  diluted  with  the 
milk  of  rice  flour  and  a  gummy  decoction  extracted  from  the  roots 
of  the  hydrangea  and  hibiscus;  of  dyes,  into  the  secret  of  whose 
alchemy  no  modern  artist  can  penetrate,  it  being  safe  to  say  the  early 
"Tan-ye"  and  "Beni-ye"  prints  can  never  be  reproduced;  of  the 
application  of  those  colours  by  the  master  engraver's  fingers — that 
wizard  hand  of  the  Orient  into  whose  finger-tips  are  distilled  the 
mysteries  of  bygone  centuries.  A  portion  of  the  colour  by  means  of 
this  calculated  pressure  is  drunk,  absorbed  into  the  paper,  and  only 
the  transparency  is  left  vibrating  upon  the  fibres,  like  colour  beneath 
the  glaze.  , 

The  "Catalogue  Raisonne"  of  M.  de  Goncourt  is  a  prose  master- 
piece.     His  descriptive  touches,  like  pastels  set  in  jewels,  captivate 

[39] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

4 

the  imagination.     Through  him  we  see  the  albums,  the 

fans,   the  kakemonos,   the  surimonos.      Oh,   the  prints, 

with  their  wondrous  backgrounds,  the  delight  of  Uta- 

maro!    Sometimes  straw-yellow,  the  uniformity  broken 

with  clouds  or  ground  mica;  sometimes  gray  in  tint,  like  the  traces 

of   receding   waves   upon    the   beach.      Some   silvered   backgrounds 

throw  moonlight  reflections  upon  the  figures ;  some  are  sombre,  bizarre 

— all  are  marvellous  beyond  words.      And  the  colours!  we  cannot 

define  them  in  English.      The   "bleus"    (malades   des  mauves),   the 

"rose"   (beni)   "si  peu  de  rose,  qu'ils  semblent  s'apercevoir  a  travers 

un  tulle;  l'azur — delave,  et  comme  noye  dans  l'eau," — not  colours, 

but   nuances,   which   recall   the  colours.      And   the   "Gauffrage,"   so 

effective  with  the  print  artists,  with  us  a  mere  confectioner's  touch! 

It  is  said  that  "the  aesthetic  temperament  of  a  nation  is  most 
subtly  felt  in  the  use  of  colour.  Purity,  coldness,  sensuality,  bright- 
ness, dullness  of  tints,  are  significant  terms  correlated  to  mental  and 
physical  human  phenomena."  The  assertion  of  Ruskin,  that  "the 
bodily  system  is  in  a  healthy  state  when  we  can  see  hues  clearly  in 
their  most  delicate  tints,  and  enjoy  them,  fully  and  simply,  with  the 
kind  of  enjoyment  children  have  in  eating  sweet  things,"  is  brought 
to  mind  in  viewing  the  Japanese  people  upon  the  occasion  of  one  of 
their  great  flower  fetes,  feasting  their  eyes  upon  cherry  blooms  or 
trailing  clusters  of  the  wistaria. 

Utamaro  planned  schemes  of  colour  and  devised  harmonies — 
themes  which,  improvised  upon  and  endlessly  imitated  by  his  artist 
confreres,  filled  his  own  countrymen  with  delight  and  ravished  the 
hearts  of  Parisian  painters.      The  influence  of  Utamaro,  Hiroshige 

[40] 


While  Mother  Sleeps. 

By  Utamaro, 

named  by 

M.  de  Goncourt: 

nLe  Fondateur  de 

L'Ecole  de  la  Vie." 


1 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


and  the  other  masters  of  Ukiyo-ye  revolutionized  the 

colour-sense  of  the  art  world,  so  that  Theodore  Child, 

writing   in    1892,    remarks   of   the   Japanese   influence: 

"The  Paris  Salon  of  today  as  compared  with  the  salon 

of  ten  years   ago   is   like   a   May   morning  compared  with   a   dark 

November  day." 

,  The  same  keen  observation  and  technical  skill  which  would 
have  made  Utamaro  a  famous  naturalist  is  shown  in  his  marvellous 
studies  of  women.  He  was  the  first  Japanese  artist  who  deviated 
from  the  traditional  manner  of  treating  the  face.  The  academic 
style  demanded  the  nose  to  be  suggested  by  one  calligraphic,  aquiline 
stroke,  the  eyes  to  be  mere  slits,  the  mouth  the  curled  up  petal  of  a 
flower.  Utamaro  blent  with  this  convention,  so  little  human,  a 
mutinous  grace,  a  spiritual  comprehension;  he  kept  the  consecrated 
lines,  but  made  them  approach  the  human.  These  "effigies  of 
women"  became  individuals ;  in  one  word,  he  is  an  idealist,  he  "makes 
a  goddess  out  of  a  courtesan."  No  detail  of  her  anatomy  escapes  his 
eye,  no  grace  of  line  or  beauty  of  contour.  M.  de  Goncourt,  in 
detailing  the  great  prints  of  Utamaro,  transports  us  to  the  Orient. 
He  unrolls  the  film  of  memory,  so  that  again  the  Japanese  woman 
stands,  reclines,  and  lives  before  us. 

"Vous  avez  la  Japonaise  en  tous  les  mouvements  intimes  de  son 
corps;  vous  l'avez,  dans  ses  appuiements  de  tete,  sur  le  dos  de  sa 
main,  quand  elle  reflechit,  dans  ses  agenouillements,  les  paumes  de 
ses  mains  appuyes  sur  les  cuisses,  quand  elle  ecoute,  dans  sa  parole, 
jetee  de  cote,  la  tete  un  peu  tournee,  et  qui  la  montre  dans  les  aspects  si 
joliment  fuyants  d'un  profil  perdu;  vous  l'avez  dans  sa  contemplation 

[41] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 


Utamaro. 


amoureuse  des  fleurs  qu'elle  regarde  aplatie  a  terre; 
vous  l'avez  dans  ses  renversements  ou  lagerement  elle 
pose,  a  demi  assise,  sur  la  balustrade  d'un  balcon;  vous 
Favez  dans  ses  lectures,  ou  elle  lit  dans  le  volume,  tout 
pres  de  ses  yeux,  les  deux  coudes  appuyes  sur  ses  genoux;  vous  l'avez 
dans  sa  toilette  qu'elle  fait  avec  une  main  tenant  devant  elle,  son  petit 
miroir  de  metal,  tandis  que  de  1' autre  main  passee  derriere  elle,  elle  se 
caresse  distraitement  la  nuque  de  son  ecran;  vous  l'avez  dans  le  con- 
tournement  de  sa  main  autour  d'une  coupe  de  sake,  dans  l'attouchement 
delicat  et  recroqueville  de  ses  doigts  de  singe,  autour  des  laques,  des 
porcelaines,  des  petits  objets  artistiques  de  son  pays;  vous  l'avez 
enfin  la  femme  de  l'Empire-du-Lever-du-Soleil,  en  sa  grace  languide, 
et  son  coquet  rampement  sur  les  nattes  du  parquet." 

To  translate  is  to  travesty,  for  the  French  language  seems  to  be 
the  only  medium  through  which  can  be  filtered  the  nuances  of 
Japanese  thought,  which  elude  the  ordinary  elements  of  language, 
like  the  perfume  of  flowers,  the  bouquet  of  delicate  vintages.  Our 
blunt  Anglo-Saxon  mars  that  picture  language,  where  one  flexible, 
curved  calligraphic  stroke  conveys  to  the  aesthetically  receptive 
oriental  imagination  what  stanzas  of  rhyming  rhapsody  fail  to 
define.  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  and  Lafcadio  Hearn  approach  the 
French,  are,  so  to  speak,  orientalized.  Ordinary  English  fails  to  give 
a  Japanese  equivalent.  It  is  too  emphatic,  too  objective;  it  suggests 
the  dominant  British  hobnail  upon  the  delicate  Tea-house  tatami — 
that  immaculate,  beautiful  matting,  into  whose  uniform  lines  embroid- 
ered draperies  dissolve  deliciously.  Oh,  those  dreams  of  dresses! — 
the   warp   and   woof   of   the   visions   of   the   masters   of   Ukiyo-ye, 

[42] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


of  Harunobu  and  Kiyonaga,  Toyokuni  and  Kuni- 
sada,  and  all  the  rest,  the  idols  of  Parisian  colourists! 
"For  us,"  says  M.  de  Goncourt,  "Utamaro  painted 
violet  dresses,  where,  upon  the  border,  degradation  roseen 
(fading  into  Beni,  that  mystic  tint,  the  spirit  of  ashes  of  rose), 
"birds  are  swooping, — violet  dresses,  across  which  woven  in 
light,  zigzag  insect  characters,  composing  the  Japanese  alpha- 
bet,— violet  dresses,  where  Corean  lions,  grim  and  ferocious, 
crouch,  gleaming  in  shading  of  old  bronze  within  the  purple  folds! 
Dresses  of  mauve,  smoky,  shading  into  bistre,  where  the  purple  iris 
unsheathes  its  head  from  the  slender  gray-green  stalk ! "  Mourasiki-ya 
(maison  mauve)  was  the  name  of  the  atelier  of  Utamaro.  "Robes 
of  that  milky  blue  the  Chinese  call  'blue  of  the  sky  after  the  rain,'  be- 
neath clusters  of  pale  rose  peonies;  dresses  of  silvery  gray,  fretted 
with  sprays  of  flowering  shrubs,  making  a  misty  moonshine;  pea- 
green  dresses,  enamelled  with  rosy  cherry  blooms;  green  dresses, 
fading  into  watery  tints,  hidden  by  groups  of  the  pawlonia,  the  coat 
of  arms  of  the  reigning  family;  purple  costumes,  channelled  with 
water  courses,  where  mandarin  ducks  pursue  each  other  around  the 
hem.  Oh,  the  beautiful  black  backgrounds,  controlling  the  scin- 
tillating mass  of  colour!  Black  robes  sown  with  chrysanthemums,  or 
showered  with  pine-needles,  worked  in  white.  Black  dresses,  where 
finely  woven  baskets  are  mingled  with  sceptres  of  office!  'Oh!  les 
belles  robes!'  he  cries,  where  flights  of  cranes  dissolve  into  the 
distance,  where  birds  are  fluttering,  where  lacy  fretwork  of  fans  and 
little  garlands  are  interwoven! — a  motive  delighted  in  by  Utamaro 
as  a  framework  for  beloved  faces."     All  that  is  beautiful  in  nature 

[43] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

and  art  lived  and  breathed  in  these  dresses,  upon  which 
the  loving  hand  of  the  painter  left  a  grace  in  every  fold. 
The  early  inspirer  of  Utamaro's  genius  was  Ki- 
yonaga,  who  had  restored  the  glory  of  the  school  of 
Torii — the  printer's  branch  of  Ukiyo-ye,  which  had  sunk  into 
temporary  oblivion  under  the  waning  powers  of  Kiyomitsu. 
The  atelier  of  Kiyonaga  became  the  sanctuary  of  the  artists 
of  Ukiyo-ye,  who,  upon  entering,  forsook  their  individual  tra- 
ditions. There  worshipped  Toyokuni  of  Utagawa;  Yeishi,  the  scion 
of  classic  and  aristocratic  Kano;  and  at  the  master's  feet  sat  the 
Young  Utamaro,  absorbing  his  methods  until,  in  his  early  composi- 
tions, said  M.  de  Goncourt,  the  technique  and  mannerisms  of  Ki- 
yonaga "saute  aux  yeux." 

The  influence  of  Kiyonaga  pervades  his  most  beautiful  work;  but 
later,  under  a  life  of  constant  self-indulgence,  amongst  associations  all 
tending  to  demoralization,  his  genius  suffered  an  eclipse.  His  loss 
of  self-control  affected  his  art,  until  the  sweeping  lines  and  noble 
contours  which  his  brush  had  acquired  in  the  atelier  of  Kiyonaga 
were  lost  or  widely  travestied  into  a  "delirium  of  female  tallness." 
In  these  wild  flights  his  brother  artists  followed  in  headlong  pursuit, 
and  the  contagion  of  the  movement  swept  the  studios  of  Paris.  In 
the  modern  poster  we  see  the  degenerate  offspring  of  the  genius  of 
Utamaro,  and  of  Toyokuni.  Professor  Fenollosa  said,  "The  genera- 
tion of  Aubrey  Beardsley  prefer  these  tricks  to  the  sober  grace  of 
Harunobu,  Kiyonaga  and  Koriusai."  It  is  art  born  of  excess,  a 
"Zolaism  in  prints." 

The   horrors   of   diseased   imagination,    the   visions   begotten   of 

[44] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

absinthe,  which  blot  the  brilliant  pages  of  De  Mau- 
passant and  the  verse  of  Paul  Verlaine,  were  reflected 
by  Utamaro  in  his  studies  of  the  loathsome  and  the 
abnormal,  where  Montaigne  declares,  "L' esprit  faisant  le 
cheval  eschappe,  enfantes  des  chimeres."  The  blasphemous  impieties 
of  this  culte,  deplored  by  all  true  Frenchmen,  in  the  country  of  Hugo 
and  Moliere,  were  distanced  by  Utamaro,  who  suborned  his  art,  his 
cynical  brush  caricaturing  under  the  distorted  figures  of  noted  cour- 
tesans the  saints  and  sages  of  the  sacred  Buddhist  legends.  Trading 
upon  his  vast  popularity,  he  issued  a  pictorial  satire  upon  one  of  the 
famous  Shoguns,  but  this  act  of  lese-majeste  brought  him  into  dis- 
favour with  the  reigning  Shogun,  the  Louis  XV  of  Japan,  an  artistic 
voluptuary,  like  his  prototype,  the  subject  of  Utamaro's  cartoon,  and 
the  artist  was  condemned  and  cast  into  prison.  From  his  cell  the  gay 
butterfly  of  the  Yoshiwara  emerged,  spent  and  enfeebled,  daring  no 
more  flights  of  fancy,  and  dying  in  1  806,  before  he  reached  his  fiftieth 
year,  from  the  effects  of  his  confinement  and  the  misuse  of  pleasure. 
Oh,  the  pity  of  it!  the  profound  pathos  in  the  picture,  in  Sekiyen's 
preface  of  the  little  "Outa"  holding  his  treasured  prize,  "le  petit 
bestiole," — the  childish  artist-hands  of  the  embryo  master  clasping 
the  insect  so  gently  to  preserve  its  ephemeral  life,  yet  later  plunging 
into  the  dissipation  and  excesses  which  shortened  his  own.  Living 
with  the  declasse,  however  we  may  gloss  their  imperfections  and 
cover  with  the  cloak  of  charity  their  sorrowful  calling,  he  became 
himself  a  cynic,  an  outcast,  an  iconoclast,  learning  that  "hardening  of 
the  heart  which  brings 

"  Irreverence  for  the  dreams  of  youth." 
145] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

Though  Utamaro  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 

popular  artists,  his  demoralization  led  to  the  decadence 

of  his  school,  which  later  was  regenerated  by  the  great 

master  of  Ukiyo-ye,  Hokusai,  the  artist  of  the  people. 

In   Hokusai,    "Dreaming   the   things  of   Heaven   and  of   Buddha," 

breathed   the  pure  spirit  of  art, — that  Spirit  of  poetry   and  purity 

which  calls  to  us  in  Milton's  immortal  lines: 

"  Mortals,  that  would  follow  me, 
Love  Virtue  ;  she  alone  is  free. 
She  can  teach  ye  how  to  climb 
Higher  than  the  sphery  chime  ; 
Or  if  Virtue  feeble  were, 
Heaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her." 


[46' 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


The  Romance  of  Hokusai. 

Master  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

"From  the  age  of  six,  I  had  a  mania  for  drawing  the  forms  of 
things.  By  the  time  I  was  fifty,  I  had  published  an  infinity  of  designs, 
but  all  I  have  produced  before  the  age  of  seventy  is  not  worth  taking 
into  account.  At  seventy-five  I  have  learned  a  little  about  the  real 
structure  of  nature, — of  animals,  plants  and  trees,  birds,  fishes  and 
insects.  In  consequence,  when  I  am  eighty,  I  shall  have  made  still 
more  progress.  At  ninety  I  shall  penetrate  the  mystery  of  things;  at 
a  hundred  I  shall  certainty  have  reached  a  marvellous  stage,  and  when 
I  am  a  hundred  and  ten,  everything  I  do — be  it  but  a  line  or  dot — 
will  be  alive.  I  beg  those  who  live  as  long  as  I,  to  see  if  I  do  not 
keep  my  word.  Written  at  the  age  of  seventy-five  by  me, — once 
Hokusai, — today  Gwakio-rojin,  Hhe  old  man,  mad  about  drawing.1" 


RS  longa,  vita  brevis,"  though  a  time-worn  aphorism, 
seems  the  best  comment  upon  these  words  of  Hokusai, 
which  preface  the  "Fugaku  Hiak'kei"  (Hundred  Views 
of  Fuji).  Judging  from  what  he  had  accomplished, 
before  his  death  in  I  849,  at  the  age  of  eighty-nine,  and  the  continual 
increase  in  his  powers,  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  had  his  life  been  ex- 
tended to  the  limit  he  craved,  the  prophecy  would  have  been  fulfilled. 
M.  Louis  Gonse  says  of  Hokusai,  "He  is  the  last  and  most  bril- 
liant figure  of  a  progress  of  more  than  ten  centuries — the  exuberant 
and  exquisite  product  of  a  time  of  profound  peace  and  incomparable 
refinement." 

[471 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

From  the  standpoint  of   Buddhism,   Hokusai  was 

The  the  crowning  glory,  the  supreme  efflorescence  of  count- 

Romance  of       I  .•  T       I  '  1  '  *        1 

Hokusai.  ,ess  Prevl°us  incarnations.  In  his  career  he  epitomized 
the  theory  of  evolution,  the  embryonic  stages  being  ex- 
emplified by  his  progress  through  the  schools.  Trained  in  the  atelier 
of  Shunsho,.  the  most  skillful  exponent  of  Ukiyo-ye  art,  he  rapidly 
absorbed  the  methods  of  his  master;  but  even  the  Popular  School 
was  trammelled  by  convention,  and  Hokusai's  genius,  rejecting  aca- 
demic fetters,  winged  its  flight  through  all  the  realms  of  oriental  art. 

He  drank  at  the  fountain-head  of  China,  then  absorbed  the 
traditions  of  the  "two  great  streams  of  Kano  and  Tosa,  which  flowed 
without  mixing  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century."  Kano, 
springing  from  Chinese  models,  was  transformed  by  the  genius  of 
Masanobu  and  his  followers,  and  became  the  most  illustrious  school 
of  painting  in  Japan.  It  was  the  official  school  of  the  Shoguns,  in 
opposition  to  "Tosa" — that  elegant  and  exquisite  appanage  of  the 
Mikados,  which  represented  aristocratic  taste. 

The  Tosa  school  is  characterized  by  extreme  delicacy  of  execu- 
tion and  fine  use  of  the  brush,  as  in  Persian  miniature  painting.  The 
splendour  of  the  screens  of  Tosa  has  never  been  surpassed,  with  their 
precious  harmonies  in  colour  and  delicate  designs  (so  often  imitated 
in  lacquer) ,  against  glorious  backgrounds  in  rich  gold-leaf. 

He  studied  the  technique  of  Okio,  founder  of  the  school  of 
realism,  which,  maturing  at  Kyoto,  led  up  to  "Ukiyo-ye,"  the  popular 
art  of  the  masses  of  Yedo.  Ukiyo-ye,  literally  "The  Floating 
World,"  despised  by  the  ascetic  disciples  of  Buddha  and  Confucius 
for  picturing  the  gay  world  of  fashion  and  folly,  was  the  name  of 

[48] 


^^^     r 


Two  Ladies. 
By  Hokusai. 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


the    school    which    liberated    Japanese    art    from    the 
shackles  of  centuries  of  tradition.  The 

Ukiyo-ye  is  the  supreme  expression,  the  concentrated  Hokusai 
essence  of  the  schools,  a  river  of  art  whose  fount  was 
India,  Persia  and  China.  For  centuries  it  was  forced  into  narrow 
channels  by  the  haughty  and  exclusive  aristocracy ;  but  ever  widening, 
its  branches  at  last  united  and  swept  into  their  joyous  current  the 
common  people  of  Japan,  who,  intuitively  art  lovefs,  had  ever  thirsted 
for  the  living  stream.  Now  they  beheld  themselves  reflected,  in  all 
the  naturalness  of  daily  life,  yet  with  a  spiritual  rendering,  "appealing," 
said  Jarves,  "to  those  intuitions  with  which  the  soul  is  freighted  when 
it  first  comes  to  earth,  whose  force  is  ever  manifested  by  a  longing  for 
an  ideal  not  of  the  earth,  and  whose  presence  can  only  be  explained 
as  an  augury  of  a  superior  life  to  be,  or  else  the  dim  reminiscence  of 
one  gone;  and  the  recognition  of  this  ideal  is  the  touchstone  of  art — 
art  which  then  becomes  the  solution  of  immortality." 

The  originators  of  Ukiyo-ye,  which  included  in  its  scope  painting 
proper,  book  illustration  and  single-sheet  pictorial  prints,  were  Iwasa 
Matahei  and  Moronobu,  followed  in  long  succession  by  Shunsui, 
the  precursor  of  Hokusai's  master,  Shunsho;  and  united  with  it 
were  the  engravers  of  the  Torii  school,  culminating  in  Kiyonaga  (with 
whose  grace  and  beauty  of  line  Hokusai  could  never  compete),  the 
refined  offshoot  of  the  Kitao,  and  the  elegant  scion  of  Kano — Yeishi. 

Hokusai's  individuality  and  independence  long  galled  his  master, 
and  a  final  rupture  was  caused  by  the  pupil's  enthusiasm  for  the  bold 
and  sweeping,  black-and-white,  calligraphic  strokes  of  Kano.  Then 
began  a  hard  struggle  for  the  youthful  artist,  who  had  no  money 

149] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


and  no  influence.      His  father  was  a  maker  of  metal 

The         mirrors,    Hokusai's   real   name  being   Nakajima   Tetsu 

Hokusai.      J*r0,  but  his  pseudonyms  were  legion.      In  the  atelier 

of  Shunsho,  he  was  called  Shunro, — taking  with  the 

other  disciples  of  this  school  of  Katsukawa,  the  first  syllable  of  his 

master's  name. 

Cast  adrift  upon  the  streets  of  Yedo,  he  sold  red  pepper,  and 
hawked  almanacs,  at  the  same  time  constantly  studying,  and  seizing 
the  best  ideas  from  all  the  schools.  Blent  with  an  intuitive  instinct 
for  art,  the  Japanese  nature  is  essentially  histrionic,  and  throughout 
the  whole  career  of  Hokusai  there  is  an  element  which  is  genuinely 
dramatic.  C.  J.  Holmes,  in  his  beautiful  work  on  Hokusai,  gives 
many  romantic  incidents  in  the  artist's  life,  and  was  it  not  by  a 
theatrical  tour  de  force  that  he  first  won  popular  favour? 

He  chose  no  doubt  a  national  holiday,  perhaps  the  festival  of 
"Cherry  Viewing,"  when  Uyeno  Park  is  thronged  with  sightseers 
of  every  station  in  life.  Here  in  the  heart  of  the  great  city  of  Tokyo 
is  a  hallowed  spot — majestic,  grand  and  peaceful,  where  in  mystic 
solemnity  the  sacred  cedars  enshrine  that  wondrous  necropolis  of  illus- 
trious dead, — for  at  Uyeno  lie  buried  six  of  the  famous  Shoguns. 

In  the  courtyard  of  one  of  the  temples,  Hokusai  erected  a  rough 
scaffolding,  upon  which  was  spread  a  sheet  of  paper,  eighteen  yards 
long  and  eleven  in  width.  Here  in  the  sacred  heart  of  Japan,  with 
tubs  of  water  and  tubs  of  ink,  the  master  and  predestined  genius  of 
his  country  manifested  his  power.  He  swept  his  huge  brush  this  way 
and  that,  the  crowd  constantly  increasing  in  density,  many  scaling 
the  temple  roof  to  see  the  marvellous  feat, — a  colossal  figure,  springing 

[50] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


into    life    at    the    touch    of    the    creator.     All    who 
know  his  work  can  in  imagination  picture   the   grand         The 
sweeping  curves  and  graduated  shadings  that  the  magic       Hokusai. 
broom   evolved;    and    the   artistic   people   gazed   spell- 
bound,  while  many  a  murmured  "Naruhodo!"    (Wonderful)    and 
sibilant   inhalation   of   the   breath   marked    their   recognition   of   the 
master's  power. 

Displaying  less  of  the  artist  than  the  genius  at  legerdemain  were 
Hokusai's  street  tricks — almost  reprehensible  did  we  not  know  the 
dire  straits  to  which  genius  is  often  reduced.  An  eager  expectant 
crowd  dogged  his  footsteps  and  watched  with  delighted  curiosity, 
while  he  sketched  landscapes,  upside  down,  with  an  egg  or  a  bottle, 
or  a  wine  measure,  anything  that  came  to  his  hand, — changing  with 
bewildering  effect  from  huge  figures  of  Chinese  heroes  and  demi- 
gods to  microscopic  drawings  on  grains  of  rice,  and  pictures  made  out 
of  chance  blots  of  ink. 

His  fame  was  noised  abroad,  and  at  last  reached  the  ears  of  the 
Shogun,  and  now  an  unprecedented  honour  was  conferred  upon  the 
humble  apostle  of  the  artisan,  for  he  was  summoned  before  the  august 
presence  to  give  an  exhibition  of  his  skill.  The  Japanese  are  ever 
imitative,  and  Hokusai  may  have  borne  in  mind  the  legend  of  his 
prototype  Sesshiu,  an  artist-priest  of  the  fifteenth  century,  who 
sketched  before  the  Emperor  of  China  a  marvellous  dragon,  with 
splashes  from  a  broom  plunged  in  ink. 

Still  more  spectacular  and  theatrical  was  Hokusai's  debut,  for, 
spreading  a  sheet  of  paper  before  the  feet  of  the  monarch,  he  covered 
it  with  a  blue  wash, — then  seizing  a  live  cock,  he  daubed  its  feet 

[51] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


with  a  red  pigment,  and  let  it  run  over  the  wet  colour, 

The         when  the  Shogun  and  his  astonished  courtiers  beheld  a 

Hokusai       flowing  stream  of  liquid  blue,  upon  which  appeared  to 

float  frlmy  segregated  petals  of  red  maple  leaves.      A 

mere  trick! — unworthy  of  genius,  we  might  say,  but  Hokusai  had 

gauged  his  countrymen,  and  knew  that  his  jeu  <T esprit  would  arouse 

and  impress   these   aristocratic  connoisseurs,   jaded  with   ceremonial 

observances,  more  than  any  display  of  technical  knowledge, — for  the 

Japanese,  as  a  nation,  are  naively  childish  in  their  love  of  novelty 

and  amusement,  and  of  the  unusual  and  bizarre. 

Is  it  not  possible  that  this  trickery  of  the  master  may  have  un- 
consciously supplied  the  motive  for  Hiroshige's  famous  print  of  a 
Yedo  suburb,  chosen  by  Professor  Fenollosa,  in  his  beautiful  work 
on  Ukiyo-ye, — where  he  so  poetically  says,  "the  orange  fire  of  maples 
deepens  the  blue  of  marshy  pools"? 

Space  does  not  permit  any  detailed  description  of  the  composi- 
tions of  Hokusai,  and  there  is  no  complete  catalogue  of  his  works, 
the  one  nearest  to  accuracy  being  M.  Edmond  de  Goncourt's  Cata- 
logue rahonne.  His  fecundity  was  marvellous.  He  illustrated 
books  of  all  kinds,  poetry,  comic  albums,  accounts  of  travels, — in  fact 
his  works  are  an  encyclopedia  of  Japanese  life.  His  paintings  are 
scattered,  and  countless  numbers  lost,  many  being  merely  ephemeral 
drawings,  thrown  off  for  the  passing  pleasure  of  the  populace.  The 
original  designs  for  the  prints  were  transferred  to  the  blocks, 
and  lost,  though  the  master  rigidly  superintended  the  reproduction 
of  his  works,  and  his  wood-cutters  were  trained  to  follow  the 
graceful  sweeping  curves  with  perfect  accuracy,  many  of  his  com- 

[52] 


5*^  t 


»    B    5    ^    _  o    - 

rr|  -  P 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


positions     being     ruled     across     for    exact     reduction. 

Ukiyo-ye  art  is  bound  up  with  print  development,  The 

and  the  climax  of  xylography  had  been  reached  in  the       Hokusai. 
time  of  Hokusai.        Japanese    book    illustration,    and 
single-sheet  printing,  revolutionized  the  world's  art.      The  great  con- 
noisseurs of  colour  tell  us  that  nowhere  else  is  there  anything  like  it, — 
so  rich  and  so  full,  that  a  print  comes  to  have  every  quality  of  a  com- 
plete painting. 

Hokusai  had  served  a  four  years'  apprenticeship  to  the  school  of 
engraving,  and  his  practiced  eye  was  ever  ready  to  detect  any  in- 
accuracy in  his  workmen.  "I  warn  the  engraver,"  he  said,  "not 
to  add  an  eyeball  underneath  when  I  do  not  draw  one.  As  to  the 
nose,  these  two  are  mine," — here  he  draws  a  nose  in  front  and  in 
profile, — "I  will  not  have  the  nose  of  Utagawa."  The  greatest 
difference  exists  in  the  beauty  and  colouring  of  the  impressions,  and 
the  amateur,  in  his  search  for  Ukiyo-ye  gems,  should  not  trust  his 
unaided  judgment. 

M.  Louis  Gonse  said  of  the  surimono,  "To  me  they  are  the  most 
seductive  morsels  of  Japanese  art."  They  are  small,  oblong  prints, 
composed  as  programmes  for  festive  occasions  with  a  text  of  verse 
enriched  by  exquisite  illustration.  The  surimono  of  Hokusai  showed 
the  influence  of  Tosa,  the  decoration  being  very  elaborate,  and  deli- 
cate as  a  Persian  miniature.  In  places,  the  surface  of  the  print  is 
goffered  for  ornament  in  relief,  and  the  colouring  is  enforced  by 
inlaying  in  gold,  silver,  bronze  and  tin. 

Some  of  the  best  examples  of  Hokusai's  art  are  the  "Waterfalls," 
the  "Bridges,"  "Thirty-six  Views  of  Fuji,"  the"Gwafu,"  the  "Hundred 

[531 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 


Views     of    Fuji"     (of    which    the    finest    edition    was 

The  brought  out   in   London   with   a   commentary   by   Mr. 

Hokusai.       F.  V.  Dickins),  and  the  fifteen  volumes  of  the  "Mang- 

wa," — a  term  hardly  translatable,  but  signifying  fugitive 

sketches,  or  drawing  as  it  comes,  spontaneously.      The  preface  best 

gives  us  the  intention  of  the  master. 

"Under  the  roof  of  Boksenn,  in  Nagoya,  he  dreamed  and  drew 
some  three  hundred  compositions.  The  things  of  Heaven  and  of 
Buddha,  the  life  of  men  and  women,  even  birds  and  beasts,  plants 
and  trees,  he  has  included  them  all,  and  under  his  brush  every  phase 
and  form  of  existence  has  arisen.  The  master  has  tried  to  give  life 
to  everything  he  has  painted,  and  the  joy  and  happiness  so  faithfully 
expressed  in  his  work  are  a  plain  proof  of  his  victory." 

Hokusai  has  been  called  the  king  of  the  artisans,  and  it  was 
for  them  especially  that  he  composed  the  drawings  of  Mang-wa. 
His  influence  is  expressed  in  all  their  works:  in  the  structure  of  the 
roofs  of  temples,  in  houses  and  their  interiors;  upon  the  things  of  every- 
day life,  as  upon  flowers  and  landscapes,  upon  lacquer,  inros  and 
netsukis,  bronzes  and  ivory. 

Gustave  Geffroy  truly  gauged  the  genius  of  Hokusai  in  speaking 
of  his  "flights  beyond  the  horizon."  In  the  master  we  recognize 
the  creator.  He  feels  the  mystery  of  the  birth  of  mountains,  as  in 
that  weird  composition  of  Fuji,  where  the  great  cone  is  seen  rising 
above  circle  upon  circle  of  serpentine  coils,  forming  the  mystic  tomoye 
— symbol  of  creation  and  eternity.  He  feels  the  pulsation  of  the 
universe,  and  the  life  of  ocean,  and  in  a  frenzy  of  creative  power, 
beneath  his  hand  the  curved  crests  of  foaming  waves  break  into  life, 

[54] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 


flashing  into   countless  sea-birds  born  of   the   froth  of 
ocean.    He  is  the  painter  of  chimera,  the  prophet  of  cata-  The 

clysm;  he  "gives  the  world  a  shake  and  invents  chaos."        Hokusai. 
How  vivid  is  Holmes'   description  of  the  wave  in  the 
seventh  Mang-wa! 

"Man  becomes  a  mere  insect,  crouching  in  his  frail  catamaran, 
as  the  giant  billow  topples  and  shakes  far  above  him.  The  con- 
vention of  black  lines  with  which  he  represents  falling  rain  is  as 
effectual  as  his  conventions  for  water  are  fanciful.  The  storm  of 
Rembrandt,  of  Rubens,  or  of  Turner,  is  often  terrible  but  never  really 
wet;  Constable  gets  the  effect  of  wetness,  but  his  storms  are  not 
terrible.  Hokusai  knows  how  a  gale  lashes  water  into  foam,  and 
bows  the  tree  before  it;  how  the  gusts  blow  the  people  hither  and 
thither,  how  sheets  of  drenching  rain  half  veil  a  landscape,  how  the 
great  white  cone  of  his  beloved  Fuji  gleams  through  a  steady  down- 
pour! His  lightning  is  rather  odd  in  comparison  with  the  realistic 
studies  of  the  great  artists  of  Europe,  but  what  European  ever  tried 
an  effect  so  stupendous  as  that  recorded  in  'Fugaku  Hiak'kei,'  where 
the  snowy  top  of  Fuji  is  seen  at  evening,  crimson  with  the  last  fiery 
rays  of  sunset,  while  all  the  flanks  of  the  mountain  are  hidden  by  a 
dark  storm-cloud,  through  which  the  lightning  flashes!" 

Poetry  and  art  are  ever  allied,  and  the  vibrations  of  genius 
encircle  the  globe.  Byron  and  Ruskin  and  Hokusai  were  con- 
temporaries. Possibly  at  the  very  moment  when  the  poet  was 
immortalizing  himself  by  composing  his  "Storm  in  the  Alps,"  the 
grand  "old  man,  mad  about  drawing,"  was  sketching  the  peerless 
mountain: — 

[551 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

1  Far  along 
The  From  peak  to  peak,  the  rattling  crags  among, 

Romance  of        Leaps  the  loud  thunder !  not  from  one  lone  cloud, 
Hokusai.  But  every  mountain  now  hath  found  a  tongue. 

And  Jura  answers  through  her  misty  shroud, 
Back  to  the  joyous  Alps,  who  call  to  her  aloud." 

Lord  Byron's  vivid  pen  also  best  describes  the  squally  storms  of 
both  Hiroshige  and  Hokusai, — where 

"  The  big  rain  comes  dancing  to  the  earth. " 
Was  not  Hokusai  truly  "a  portion  of  the  tempest"?  as  he  represents 
himself,  drawing  Fuji,  in  winter,  working  in  a  frenzy  of  haste, — for 
the  ground  is  covered  with  snow — two  brushes  in  his  hand,  and 
wonder  of  wonders!  one  held  between  his  toes.  This  picture,  also 
from  "The  Hundred  Views  of  Fuji,"  prefaces  Marcus  B.  Huish's 
work  on  Japanese  art. 

The  closing  scene  in  the  drama  of  Hokusai's  life  is  full  of  pathos. 
Though  his  whole  career  had  been  shadowed  by  poverty,  and 
shrouded  in  obscurity,  his  art  still  held  him  earth-bound.  Upon  his 
death-bed  he  said,  "If  Heaven  would  only  grant  me  ten  more  years!" 

Then,  as  he  realized  that  the  end  approached,  he  murmured,  "If 
Heaven  had  but  granted  me  five  more  years  I  could  have  been 
a  real  painter." 

So  ended  the  life  of  the  master  of  Ukiyo-ye.  His  body  lies 
beneath  the  pines  of  Asakusa,  but  would  we  not  gladly  believe  that 
his  "soul  turned  Will-o'-the-wisp,  may  ever  come  and  go  at  ease, 
over  the  summer  fields," — for  this  was  the  last  expression  of  his  pas- 
sionate desire. 


[56] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


Hiroshige. 

Landscape  Painter  and  Apostle  of  Impressionism. 

3F  THE  lovely  "Land  of  the  Rising  Sun"  should,  during  one  of 
those  volcanic  throes  which  threaten  her  extinction,  sink  for- 
ever beneath  the  depths  of  ocean,  she  would  yet  live  for  us 
through  the  magic  brush  of  Hiroshige.     Gazing  at  his  land- 
scapes, the  airy  wing  of  imagination  wafts  us  to  a  land  of 
showers  and  sunsets — a  fairy  scene,  where  the  rainbow  falls  to  earth, 
shattered  into  a  thousand  prisms — where  waters  softly  flow  towards 
horizons  touched  with  daffodil  or  azure  tinted. 

Here  is  a  gliding  sampan  with  closed  shutters.  Inside,  the  lan- 
tern's diffused  light  throws  a  silhouette  upon  the  bamboo  curtain,  a 
drooping  girlish  head  bending  towards  the  unseen  lover  at  her  feet. 
Ripples  play  upon  the  water,  stirred  by  the  amorous  breath  of  ori- 
ental night.  In  fancy  we  hear  the  tinkling  of  the  samisen,  touched 
by  delicate  fingers,  sweetly  perfumed. 

Now  we  see  rain  upon  the  Tokaido.  A  skurrying  storm.  Af- 
frighted coolies  running  this  way  and  that.  A  mountain  full  of  echoes 
and  horror.  Down  it  splash  rivulets,  running  into  inky  pools.  Dark- 
ness and  terror  and  loneliness,  and  longing  for  warmth  and  shelter  and 
the  peace  of  home. 

In  marked  contrast  is  one  of  the  "Seven  Impressions  of  Hakone." 
A  glad  reveille.  The  sun  breaks  out,  the  clouds  have  burst  asunder, 
masses  of  vapour  float  here  and  there.  All  is  chaotic,  untamed,  a 
palette  wildly  mingled. 

The  Japanese  so  dearly  love  Nature,  in  all  her  moods,  that  when 

[571 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


she  dons  her  mantle  of  snow  they  hesitate,  even  when  ne- 
cessity compels,  to  sully  its  purity.     In  one  of  Utamaro's 
prints,  sweetly  entitled  by  M.  Edmond  de  Goncourt  "La 
Nature   Argentee,"  a  little  musiime  is  seen  searching  the 
snowy  landscape  she  loves,  and,  hating  to  blot  the  beautiful  carpet, 
she  cries,  "Oh,  the  beautiful  new  snow !    Where  shall  I  throw  the  tea- 
leaves?"     With  Hiroshige,  the  artist  of  snow  and  mist,  we  feel  this 
love,  and  so  successfully  does  he  deal  with  a  snowy  landscape  that 
we  see  the  snow  in  masses,  luminous,  soft  and  unsullied,  as  if  Nature 
had  lent  a  helping  hand  to  portray  her  pure  white  magic.     So,  with- 
out formula  or  technique,  but  absolutely  and  sincerely,  he  unrolls  the 
winter  pageant  before  us. 

The  Japanese  landscape  painter  sums  up  nature  in  broad  lines,  to 
which  all  details  are  more  or  less  subordinated.  This  rendering  of 
the  momentary  vision  of  life  and  light, — the  spirit,  not  the  letter  of 
the  scene, — is  what  is  meant  by  Impressionism.  Whereas,  however 
the  French,  impressionists  express  light  by  modelling  surfaces,  the 
Japanese  adhere  rigidly  to  line,  and  rely  upon  gradations  of  colour 
and  the  effect  of  washes  to  produce  the  illusion  of  light.  Their  land- 
scape is  expressed  in  clear-cut  lines  and  flat  masses  of  colour.  In  the 
prints  this  virtue  of  abstract  line  is  exemplified,  the  outline  being  the 
essential  element  of  the  composition,  for  upon  line  and  arrangements 
of  balanced  colour  the  artist  must  depend,  cramped  as  he  is  by  the 
necessities  of  the  wood-cut.  And  here  he  displays  his  wonderful  in- 
genuity, his  fineness  of  gradations  and  opposition,  his  boldness  and 
infinity  of  device,  and  in  spite  of  the  limitations  which  hamper  him,  he 

[58] 


Wistaria  Viewing  at 

Kameido. 

By  Hiroshige. 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

realizes    absolute    values    in    the    narrowest    range,    by 
virtue  of  his  knowledge  of  lines  and  spaces. 

"No  scientifically  taught  artist,"  said  Jarves,  "can 
get  into  as  few  square  inches  of  paper  a  more  distinct 
realization  of  space,  distance,  atmosphere,  perspective  and  landscape 
generally,  not  to  mention  sentiment  and  feeling." 

This  virtue  of  the  line  is  the  inheritance  of  the  Japanese,  the  con- 
summate handling  of  the  brush  almost  a  racial  instinct.  From  China, 
far  back  in  the  centuries,  came  the  sweeping  calligraphic  stroke,  of 
which  in  Japan  the  school  of  Kano  became  the  noblest  exponent. 
nL'ecole,n  said  M.  de  Goncourt,  ndes  audaces  et  de  la  bravoure  du 
faire,  iecole  tantot  aux  ecrasements  du  pinceau,  tantot  aux  tenuitis 
d'un  c/ieveu." 

As  soon  as  the  tiny  hand  of  the  Japanese  baby  can  grasp  the 
brush  its  art  education  begins.  The  brush  is  the  Japanese  alphabet — 
it  is  their  fairy  wand,  their  playmate — they  learn  to  paint  intuitively, 
though  later  the  most  assiduous  study  is  given  to  acquire  the  charac- 
teristic touch  of  the  school  with  which  they  affiliate.  The  brush  is 
their  genie,  subservient  to  their  imagination;  they  master  and  "juggle8 
with  it.  For  no  foreign  taught  technique  will  they  barter  their 
birthright. 

And  our  masters  and  instructors  in  art  more  and  more  recognize 
the  value  of  initial  brush-work.  The  following  excerpt  from  Walter 
Crane,  in  Line  and  Form,  might  serve  as  a  preface  to  a  work  on 
Hokusai  or  Hiroshige:  "The  practice  of  forming  letters  with  the 
brush  afforded  a  very  good  preliminary  practice  to  a  student  of  line 
and  form.     An  important  attribute  of  line  is  its  power  of  expressing 

[591 


IMPRESSIONS       OF      UKIYO-YE 

or  suggesting  movement.     Undulating  lines  always  sug- 

gest  action  and  unrest  or  the  resistance  of  force  of  some 

kind.     The  firm-set  yet  soft  feathers  of  a  bird  must  be 

rendered   by  a  different  touch  from  the  shining  scales  of 

a  fish.      The  hair  and  horns  of  animals,  delicate  human  features, 

flowers,  the  sinuous  lines  of  drapery,  or  the  massive  folds  of  heavy 

robes,  all  demand  from  the  draughtsman  in  line  different  kinds  of 

suggestive  expression." 

We  are  told  that  Hiroshige  began  his  career  by  making  pictures 
in  coloured  sands  on  an  adhesive  background,  to  amuse  the  public, 
and  perhaps  this  artistic  juggling  helped  him  later  in  arranging  his 
schemes  of  colour,  for  the  limitations  of  the  block  demanded  almost 
equal  simplicity  in  composition. 

The  impressions  of  Lake  Biwa,  one  of  Hiroshige's  finest  series 
of  views,  serve  as  a  beautiful  illustration  of  the  almost  exclusive  use 
of  line  in  bringing  out  the  salient  characteristics  of  the  landscape. 
His  sweeping  brush  shows  us  volcanic  mountains,  encircling  the  lake, 
like  rocky  billows,  torn  and  jagged,  for  legend  says  that  as  the  peer- 
less mountain  Fuji-san  rose  in  one  night,  so  the  ground  sank,  and  the 
space  was  filled  by  the  beautiful  lake  named  from  its  resemblance 
in  form  to  the  Japanese  lute.  The  trees  which  fringe  the  shore,  black 
and  misty,  upon  close  inspection  resolve  themselves  into  a  network  of 
criss-cross  lines  and  blotches.  The  sampans'  sails,  the  waves,  the 
rushes  on  the  shore,  the  roofs  of  the  village  nestling  beneath  the  cliffs, 
are  all  adroitly  rendered  by  horizontal  lines  and  skillful  zigzags.  The 
rest  of  the  composition  is  a  wash  of  shaded  blues  and  grays,  fading 
towards  the  horizon  into  smoky  violets. 

[60] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

Biwa,  the  beautiful,  suggestive  of  mystery,  the  four- 
stringed  lute  gives  thee  her  name.  Through  the  music 
of  thy  rippling  eddies  do  sighs  well  up  in  thee,  the  mur- 
mur of  the  lost?  A  pall  of  darkness  hovers  over  thee, 
pierced  by  a  gleam  of  sunshine,  beckoning  like  a  lover's  hand. 

Much  diversity  of  opinion  exists  with  regard  to  the  identity  of  the 
artist,  or  artists,  who  designed  the  prints  signed  Hiroshige.  The  latest 
research,  however,  justifies  the  assertion  that  there  was  but  one  land- 
scape painter,  Hiroshige  the  Great. 

The  pupils, — notably  one,  who,  among  other  names,  signed  Shi- 
genobu,  until  after  his  master's  death,  when  he  took  the  title  of  Hiro- 
shige the  Second,  gradually  assuming  his  full  nom-de-pinceau,  Hiro- 
shige Ichiryusai, — faithfully  imitated  his  style,  also  amplifying  the 
multitudinous  designs  and  sketches  made  by  the  master,  yet  the  genius 
of  the  great  artist  is  stamped  upon  his  work,  and  as  a  clever  critic 
tersely  says:     "Everything  he  touched  was  his  autograph." 

Mr.  John  S.  Happer,  an  indefatigable  student  of  Ukiyo-ye  and 
collector  of  nishiki-ye  gems,  during  diligent  research,  discovered  a 
clew  that  leads,  beyond  controversy,  to  the  right  attribution  of  the 
prints  signed  Hiroshige,  and  which  he  intends  later  to  make  public. 
Nearly  all  the  important  vertical  sets,  he  says,  most  of  which  have 
been  ascribed  to  the  second  Hiroshige,  are  by  the  first  artist,  although 
doubtless  his  pupils  assisted  him  in  his  work,  rendering  their  aid,  as 
did  the  pupils  of  Hokusai  in  the  preparation  of  the  Mang-wa.  Hiro- 
shige also  associated  himself  at  times  with  other  artists,  one  set  of 
the  Kisokaido,  for  example,  being  in  part  the  work  of  Keisai  Yeisen. 

[611 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

and  he  supplied  many  backgrounds  to  the  prints  of  Kuni- 
sada  and  Kuniyoshi. 
i  o$  ige.  j^  ^e  cataj0gue  Qf  tne  "Collection  Hayashi"  only 

two  prints  are  assigned  to  pupils  of  Hiroshige,  one  of 
them  bearing  the  signature  of  Shigenobu. 

The  masterpieces  signed  Hiroshige  are  all  by  one  great  genius, 
the  Apostle  of  Impressionism.  "Hiro,  Hiro,  Hiroshige,  great  is  Hiro- 
shige," cries  Mr.  Happer,  in  an  outburst  of  enthusiasm.  "Before 
Hiroshige  there  was  no  Japanese  landscape  master, — after  him  there 
is  none." 

In  the  "Happer"  Collection  is  a  memorial  portrait  of  Hiroshige 
by  Kunisada  (Toyokuni),  the  inscription  upon  which  is  of  especial 
interest,  confirming,  as  it  does,  the  date  of  his  death  and  proving  that 
the  "Meisho  Yedo  Hiak'kei,"  the  vertical  set  of  Yedo  views,  so 
often  ascribed  to  his  successor,  were  by  the  master. 

The  inscription  is  thus  quaintly  interpreted  by  a  Japanese  student : 
"Ryusai  Hiroshige  is  a  distinguished  follower  of  Toyohiro,  who 
was  a  follower  of  Toyoharu,  the  founder  of  the  Utagawa  School. 
At  the  present  time,  Hiroshige,  Toyokuni  and  Kuniyoshi  are  con- 
sidered the  three  great  masters  of  Ukiyo-ye, — no  others  equal  them. 
Hiroshige  was  especially  noted  for  landscape.  In  the  Ansei  era, 
1854-1859,  he  published  the  'Meisho  Yedo  Hiak'kei'  ('Hundred 
Views  of  Yedo'),  which  vividly  present  the  scenery  of  Yedo  to  the 
multitude  of  admirers. 

"About  this  time  also  appeared  a  magazine  entitled  'Meisho 
Zuye'  (  'Sonnets  on  Yedo  Scenes'  ) ,  a  monthly,  illustrated  by  Hiro- 
shige, and  displaying  his  wonderful  skill  with  the  brush,  to  the  admi- 

[62] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

ration  of  the  world.     He  passed  away,  to  the  world  be- 
yond, on  the  sixth  day  of  the  ninth  month  of  this  year, 
1858,  at  the  ripe  age  of  sixty-two   (sixty-one  by  our 
count).      He  left  behind  a  last  testament,  or  farewell 
sonnet,  ^Azuma  ji  ni  fude  wo  no-koshite  tabi  no  sora;  Nishi  no  mi 
kuni  no  Meisho  wo  Mimu.1       (Dropping  the  brush  at  Azuma,  East- 
ern Capital,  I  go  the  long  journey  to  the  Western  Country,  Buddhist 
Heaven  is  in  the  West,  to  view  the  wonderful  sceneries  there;  per- 
chance to  limn  them  too.) 

"This  by  Temmei  Rojin,  picture  by  Toyokuni. 
"Dated,  Ansei  5,  ninth  month  (October,  1858)." 
The  best  known  prints  by  Hiroshige  are  the  "Fifty-three  Stations 
between  Yedo  and  Kyoto."  This  Tokaido  series  was  at  first  beau- 
tifully printed,  but  the  later  impressions  show  a  sad  decay  in  the 
colouring.  The  "Yedo  Haik'kei"  or  "Hundred  Views  of  Yedo," 
give  a  panoramic  vista  of  the  Shoguns'  capital.  The  pictorial  de- 
scription of  Yedo,  in  black  and  pale  blue,  is  a  lovely  series.  In  many 
of  these  landscapes  the  Dutch  influence  is  very  marked,  for  the  master 
of  Hiroshige,  Toyohiro,  from  whom  he  derived  the  first  syllable  of 
his  nom-de-pinceau,  had  experimented  in  landscape  painting  after  the 
Dutch  wood-cuts  which  were  scattered  throughout  the  country.  Al- 
though Hiroshige  is  best  known  through  his  landscapes,  he,  like  most 
Japanese  painters,  was  too  universal  an  artist  to  confine  himself  solely 
to  one  branch.  He  loved  every  phase  of  nature,  and  in  one  of  his 
well-known  prints,  "The  Eagle,"  his  skill  in  the  delineation  of  birds 
is  best  shown.     In  the  later  impressions  a  pale  yellowish  tone  takes  the 

[63] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

place  of  the  beautiful  steel-blue  background  of  the  earlier 
prints,  miracles  of  colour  printing. 

Athwart  this  background  of  ineffable  blue,  which 
loses  itself  in  the  mists  that  veil  the  sacred  mountain,  is 
seen,  sweeping  and  sailing  cruelly  alert,  the  evil  eagle  of  Hiroshige. 
His  wicked  gaze  is  set  on  nests  of  murmuring  wood-doves,  he  eyes 
the  callow  sea-birds  in  their  bed  of  rushes.  The  temple  bell  rings 
solemnly;  the  long  vibrations  cleave  the  azure  dusk.  It  is  the  hour 
of  rest  and  dreams.     Begone,  base  harbinger  of  evil! 

In  the  early  prints  by  Hiroshige  the  colours  are  most  beautiful, 
one  soft  tone  fading  imperceptibly  into  another,  the  blues  and  greens 
so  marvellously  blended  as  to  be  almost  interchangeable.  We  are 
told  that  Michelangelo  loved  the  companionship  of  the  old  workman 
who  ground  his  colours;  and  of  the  Japanese,  it  is  said,  "this  making 
one  family  of  the  greater  artist  and  all  who  had  to  do  with  him 
has  given  that  peculiar  completeness,  that  sense  of  peace  and  absence 
of  struggle  which  we  feel  in  Japanese  art." 

In  vain  Hiroshige  fought,  towards  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  against  introduction  of  cheap  and  inferior  pigments,  which 
were  taking  the  place  of  the  native  dyes — Nature's  gifts,  distilled 
by  her  artist  children.  Reds,  yellows,  blues  and  greens,  intense  and 
crude,  were  now  imported,  and  Western  commercialism  sapped  the 
virtue  of  the  sincere  and  devoted  artists  and  artisans  of  the  Orient. 

In  describing  the  effect  of  colour  in  one  of  the  Nikko  temples,  W. 
B.  Van  Ingen  throws  a  searchlight  upon  the  chemical  secrets  of  this 
splendour,  which  he  tells  us,  if  asked  to  describe  in  one  word,  that 

[64] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

t 

word  would  be  "golden."      "These  colours,"  he  says, 
"are  not.  imitations  of  colours.      If  vermilion  is  used, 
it  is  cinnabar  and  not  commercialized  vermilion  which 
is  employed,  nor  is  something  substituted  for  cobalt  be- 
cause it  is  cheaper  and  will   'do  just  as  well.'      Each  colour  is  used 
because  it  is  beautiful  and  frank  as  a  colour,  not  because  some  other 
colour  is  beautiful.      If  lacquer  is   the  best  medium  to  display   the 
beauty  of  the  pigment,  lacquer  is  used,  and  if  water  is  better,  lacquer 
is  discarded,  and  if  these  colours  are  not  imitations  of  colours,  neither 
are  they  suggestions  of  colours.     Pink  is  not  used  for  red ;  if  it  is  used 
at  all,  it  is  used  for  its  own  beauty,  and  feeble  bluish  washes  are  not 
made  to  do  service  for  blue.     The  Oriental  has  not  yet  learned  the 
doctrine  of  substitution;  he  knows  that  substitution  is  transformation." 

The  secrets  of  colouring  of  the  early  prints,  the  joy  of  Parisian 
studios  and  which  inspired  Whistler,  are  lost.  The  delicious  greens 
of  old  mosses,  the  pale  rose  tints,  the  veinings  and  marblings,  the 
iridescent  tints  of  ocean  shells,  the  luminous  colours  of  the  anemone, 
the  bleus  malades  des  mauves — that  divine  violet,  a  benison  of  the 
palette  handed  down  by  those  old  Buddhist  monks,  the  earliest  paint- 
ers of  India  and  China. 

These  visions  of  colour  are  taking  the  place  of  obscurity  and 
gloom,  for  the  great  impressionists,  Claude  Monet,  Manet,  the  Bar- 
bizon  school  also  and  its  disciples,  have  abjured  the  old  dark  shadows 
and  substituted  violet  washes,  seeming  to  share  the  privilege  with  the 
saints  and  sages  of  "seeing  blue  everywhere."  All  true  artists  live 
"within  the  sphere  of  the  infinite  images  of  the  soul."  These  seers 
are  their  own  masters,  and,  as  Theodore  Child  says  so  exquisitely, 

[651 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

"they  are  of  rare  and  special  temperaments,  and  through 
their  temperament  they  look  at  nature  and  see  beautiful 
*e'  personal  visions.  They  fix  their  visions  in  colour  or 
marble  and  then  disappear  forever,  carrying  with  them 
the  secrets  of  their  mysterious  intellectual  processes."  Such  a  special 
temperament  was  bequeathed  to  Whistler.  He  submitted  himself  to 
the  Japanese  influence,  not  imitating  but  imbibing  oriental  methods, 
and  following  them,  notwithstanding  Philistine  clamour,  for  the 
English  art  doctrines  of  the  time  were  diametrically  opposed  to  these 
innovations.  Regardless  of  sneers,  he  followed  the  bent  of  his  genius, 
which  led  him  into  oriental  fields.  He  felt  the  sweet  influence  of  such 
artists  as  Hokusai  and  Hiroshige.  He  took  advantage  of  the  centuries 
of  thought  given  to  drapery,  in  the  land  where,  as  with  Greece,  dress 
is  a  national  problem ;  where  no  fads  and  follies  of  fashion  fostered  by 
commercialism  are  allowed;  where  the  artists  design  dress,  and  the 
people  gratefully  and  sincerely  adopt  their  ideas. 

When  we  can  follow  them  and  allow  art  to  rule,  then  hideous 
vagaries  and  vulgarities,  distortions  of  the  figure  by  hoops  and  wires, 
and  monstrosities  in  sleeves  will  cease.  Then  may  we  hope  to  be  an 
aesthetic  nation.  We  need  our  American  Moronobus  to  design  and 
embroider  and  paint  dresses  for  their  beautiful  and  intuitively  tasteful 
countrywomen. 

The  colour  vision  of  the  Oriental  far  surpasses  our  own.  His 
eyes  are  sensitive  to  colour  harmonies  which,  applied  to  landscape, 
at  first  seem  unreal,  impossible,  until  we  realiae  that  though  they  pre- 
sent objects  in  hues  intrinsically  foreign  to  them,  yet  the  result  justifies 
this  arrangement,  and  its  integrity  is  recognized,  for  the  impression 

[66] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 


we  receive  is  the  true  one.     And  this  chaotic  massing  of 
colour  we  notice  in  a  landscape  by  Hiroshige  was  em- 
ployed by  many  of  the  old  masters.     Of  the  stormy  "im- 
passion of  Tintoret,  Ruskin  says:  "He  involves  his  earth 
in  coils  of  volcanic  cloud,  and  withdraws  through  circle  flaming  above 
circle  the  distant  light  of  paradise." 

There  is  a  keynote  to  art,  as  to  music,  and  to  genius;  through 
the  inner  vision  this  harmony  is  revealed.  It  lies  within  the  precincts 
of  the  soul,  beyond  the  reach  of  talented  mediocrity,  however  versed 
in  the  canon  of  art.  Nor  can  this  occult  gift  be  handed  down.  The 
most  ardent  disciples  of  Raphael  tried  in  vain  to  express  themselves 
after  his  pattern.  The  sublime  inspiration  which  found  its  fullest  out- 
ward manifestation  in  the  Sistine  Madonna  rested  there.  The  poets 
realized  this  colour  vision,  for  Dante  cried — 

1  Had  I  a  tongue  in  eloquence  as  rich 
As  is  the  colouring  in  Fancy's  loom." 

Inspiration  must  be  sought  by  other  than  mechanical  means.  Have  not 
the  most  inspired  revelations  of  colour  come  to  the  great  master, 
William  Keith,  when,  invoking  the  aid  of  his  old  temple  bell,  its  lin- 
gering vibrations  yielded  to  him  rich  secrets  of  colour  harmony,  as 
the  song  of  the  bell  revealed  to  the  soul  of  Schiller  the  mystery  of 
life  and  birth  and  death,  which  he  crystallized  in  his  immortal  poem? 
This  is  the  keynote  of  Impressionism,  the  touchstone  of  art.  What 
a  fairy  wand  was  wafted  by  Whistler,  standing  upon  Battersea 
Bridge!  "The  evening  mist,"  he  said,  "clothes  the  riverside  with 
poetry,  as  with  a  veil,  and  the  poor  buildings  lose  themselves  in  the 
dim  sky,  and  the  tall  chimneys  become  Campanili,  and  the  ware- 

[671 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 


houses  are  palaces  in  the  night  and  the  whole  city  hangs 
in  the  heavens,  and  fairyland  is  before  us!" 

Hiroshige.  .  1      1    •  i 

Leaning  upon  the  bridge,  the  sweet  influence  of  Hiro- 
shige permeating  his  soul,  in  the  crucible  of  his  fancy  he 
blent  with  the  radiant  Orient  a  vision  of  old  London,  grimy  and 
age-worn,  and  realized  "a  Japanese  fancy  on  the  banks  of  the  gray 
Thames."  To  this  picture  he  set  the  seal  of  his  brother  artist,  and 
so  the  two  apostles  of  Impressionism,  Occidental  and  Oriental,  in  that 
loveliest  nocturne,  will  together  go  down  to  posterity. 


[68] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


Analytical  Comparisons 

between  the  Masters  of  Uluyo-ye. 

3T  IS  difficult  rightly  to  determine  the  distinguishing  charac- 
teristics of  the  noted  artists  of  Ukiyo-ye:  but  the  connois- 
seurs speak  of  the  extreme  grace  of  pictorial  line  in  Morono- 
bu:  the  sweeping  areas  of  pattern  in  the  garments  of  Kiyo- 
nobu  and  his  followers,  and  their  forceful  ways  of  outlining 
the  folds  of  drapery,  all  full  of  meaning. 

Grace  and  delicacy  mark  the  idyllic  compositions  of  Harunobu 
and  his  successor  Koriusai  (the  face  of  the  Japanese  woman  is  the 
face  of  Harunobu,  Koriusai,  Shunsho  and  his  school).  M.  de  Gon- 
court  says:  "The  Japanese  woman  is  lithe,  little,  and  rounded.  Out 
of  this  woman  Utamaro  created  the  slender,  svelte  woman  of  his 
prints, — a  woman  who  has  the  delicate  outlines  of  an  early  Watteau 
sketch.  Before  Utamaro,  Kiyonaga  had  drawn  women,  larger  than 
nature,  but  fleshy  and  thick.  The  face  of  the  ordinary  Japanese 
woman  is  short  and  squat,  and  except  for  the  inexpressible  vivacity 
and  sweetness  of  the  black  eyes  it  is  the  face  which  Harunobu,  Kori- 
usai and  Shunsho  represented.  Out  of  this  face  Utamaro  created  a 
long  oval.  He  slid  into  the  traditional  treatment  of  the  features  a 
mutinous  grace,  a  naive  astonishment,  a  spiritual  comprehension;  and 
he  was  the  first  artist  who  attempted,  while  preserving  the  consecrated 
traditional  lines,  to  blend  with  them  a  human  expression,  so  that 
his  best  prints  become  real  portraits.  Studying  them,  we  no  longer 
see  only  the  universal,  but  the  individual  face,  and,  unlike  the  other 

[69] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

Japanese  artists,  he  idealizes  his  countrywoman  through 

Analytical      tne  mmiicry  °f  ner  gracious  humanity." 
Comparisons.  The  women  of  Kiyonaga  have  a  more  than  human 

dignity  and  grace,  the  classic  folds  of  his  drapery  re- 
calling figures  of  the  Renaissance.  The  Japanese  artist  always  has 
an  underlying  motive  in  the  disposition  of  his  drapery.  The  most 
recognizable  perhaps  are  those  called  "Guantai,"  signifying  rude, 
with  angular  outlines,  and  "Rintai,"  delicate,  supple  and  wavy,  like 
the  undulations  of  a  river. 

In  the  "Guantai"  motive  we  see  the  angles  of  the  rocks,  even  in 
the  most  delicate  folds  of  drapery.  In  "Rintai"  no  angle  is  visible. 
Here  wavelike  ripples  descend,  flowing  around  the  feet  of  the  wearer. 
In  these  swirls  of  drapery  are  realized  the  Buddhist  conceptions  of  Life 
in  everything, — the  lines  are  moving,  sentient,  and  all  but  the  leading 
folds  that  determine  the  lines  of  the  figure  are  suppressed.  The  Jap- 
anese painter  knows  that  the  true  master  selects,  does  not  draw  all 
he  sees,  but  concentrates  his  efforts  towards  reproducing  the  lines  of 
movement,  and  in  figures,  the  lines  of  the  limbs  and  flowing  drapery. 
In  their  designs  for  dresses  the  artists  of  Ukiyo-ye  emphasized  the 
theorem  that  art  is  the  love  of  certain  balanced  relations  and  propor- 
tions, for  they  planned  dresses  in  which  every  separate  part  is  welded 
into  one  harmonious  whole.  They  solved  theories  in  colour,  and  de- 
lighted in  selecting  as  trials  for  their  skill  the  most  unmanageable 
patterns,  such  as  plaids  and  checks.  They  extolled  "Notan"  or  the 
decorative  use  of  values. 

In  the  best  prints  the  decoration  of  the  dress  fits  in  with  the 
scheme  of  the  picture.     M.  de  Goncourt  says:    "If  the  figures  are 

[70] 


Two  Ladies. 

By  Yeishi,  who  gave 

to  his  (aces 

a  mystic,  even  religious 

expression, 

like  the  wonv  n  of  the 

Middle  Ages. 


*9 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

represented  out  of  doors,  flowers  seem  to  be  shed  upon 
the  dresses,  as  if  the  wearer  passed  beneath  blossoming  Analytical 
trees.  If  the  artist  paints  butterflies  on  a  costume,  they  Comparisons, 
harmonize  with  the  background.  If  peonies  are  used 
he  alternates  their  whiteness  with  a  purple  tint.  And  how  admirable 
is  their  use  of  relief!  Upon  a  blue  or  mauve  gown,  how  charming 
is  the  white  relief  of  an  embossed  cherry  petal,  and  so  marvellously 
executed  is  this  goffering,  that  many  of  the  oldest  impressions  retain 
the  impression  as  perfectly  as  if  only  printed  yesterday."  Utamaro 
at  first  equalled  Kiyonaga  in  the  majesty  of  his  figures,  later  he  lost 
beauty  and  strength  in  exaggeration.  Yeishi  shows  a  striking 
resemblance  to  Utamaro,  and  he,  too,  followed  after  Kiyonaga:  his 
studies  of  women  are  noted  for  their  refined  elegance.  Yeisen  com- 
pares with  Utamaro  in  the  grace  with  which  he  portrays  women, 
and  Yeizan's  lines  are  stronger,  but  show  a  marked  similarity.  Hart- 
mann  says:  "The  linear  beauties  of  the  representations  of  Yeizan, 
Yeishi,  Yeisen,  impress  one  like  a  Nautch,  like  some  languid  oriental 
dance  in  which  the  bodies  undulate  with  an  almost  imperceptible 
vibration.  The  Japanese  see  in  a  woman,  a  glorification  of  all 
beautiful  things — they  even  study  the  natural  grace  of  the  willow, 
plum  and  cherry  trees,  to  find  the  correct  expression  of  her 
movements." 

Toyokuni  was  the  master  of  mimetic  art.  In  his  actor  faces  he 
runs  the  gamut  of  emotion, — jealousy,  passion,  fiendish  fury  and 
concentrated  cunning,  rush  at  us  from  his  prints.  Toyokuni,  the 
Marionette  maker,  forced  life  into  the  forms  of  his  puppets,  and  later 
the  same  power  is  shown  in  his  designs  for  the  block.     Like  many 

[7!] 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 

of  the  Ukiyo-ye  artists,  he  employs  caricature,  but  his 
Analytical      figures  are  living,  sentient. 
Comparison*.  M.  de  Goncourt  says:    "In  comparing  two  books  by 

Utamaro,  and  Toyokuni,  illustrating  the  occupations  of 
the  women  of  the  ^  oshiwara  Toyokuni,  often  the  equal  of  Utamaro 
in  his  triptychs  is  beaten  by  his  rival.  His  women  have  not  the 
elegance,  the  willowy  grace,  the  figures  of  Utamaro  possess,  nor 
their  replendent  personality.  His  pictures  lack  the  spirit,  the  life, 
the  'trick'  of  voluptuousness  of  the  women  of  the  'Flower  Quar- 
ter.' Then  the  comic  note  which  Toyokuni  sought  for  in  representing 
these  scenes,  adds  triviality  to  his  work.  In  short,  to  judge  between 
the  rival  painters,  one  has  only  to  place  side  by  side  a  woman  painted 
by  Utamaro  and  one  by  Toyokuni.  The  first  is  a  little  marvel,  the 
second  only  a  commonplace  print."  Kunisada  followed  in  the 
footsteps  of  his  master  Toyokuni,  adding  charming  backgrounds, 
which  he  borrowed  from  Hiroshige;  in  fact,  the  Hiroshige  are  said 
to  have  supplied  many  backgrounds  to  the  prints  of  Kunisada  and 
Kuniyoshi. 

Hokusai  used  all  methods,  acknowledged  no  school.  His  lines 
flowing  out  of  the  prescribed  limits  hint  at  vast  stretches  of  country. 
Swirls  of  waves  foam  up  in  the  impressions,  supplying  an  alphabet  of 
motion.  In  Mang-wa  is  blent  sweetness  and  power,  structure  and 
the  fundamental  vital  motive,  underlying  all  art.  When  working 
for  the  engraver  he  was  concise,  rapid  and  impulsive,  but  when  con- 
templating nature  he  sketched  in  freedom, — his  execution  became 
fairy  like. 

The    landscape   of    Hiroshige,    though    confined    to    the    narrow 

[72] 


An  Actor 

in  the  Miyako  Dance. 

By  Shunko, 

pupil  of  Shunsho, 

nicknamed  Ko-tsubo, 

or  'The  Little  Jar.' 

from  the  seal 
used  by  his  master. 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

range  of  the  wood-cut,  have  all  the  qualities  of  Impres- 
sionism,  the   details   are   subordinated,   only   the   salient     Analytical 
points  of  the  scene  being  represented,  but  the  atmosphere   Comparisons, 
supplies  what  is  lacking,  and  this  incommunicable,  subtle 
gift,    the   birthright   of    the    artists,    enabled   them    to   conjure    living 
pictures  from  the  hard  medium  of  the  wooden  block. 

The  following  suggestive  comparisons  between  the  masters  of 
Ukiyo-ye,  kindly  volunteered  by  Mr.  Morgan  Shepard,  are  full  of 
value  to  the  student,  as  the  individual  opinion  of  a  refined  amateur 
and  art  critic. 

Of  Harunobu  he  says:  "Though  from  the  point  of  proportion 
his  figures  seem  to  lack  technic,  the  naive  artlessness  of  his  lines 
perfectly  satisfies  us.  In  this  purpose  of  simplicity  they  almost 
suggest  the  qualities  of  the  fresco  work  by  the  early  Tuscan  masters, 
when  the  spirit  was  striving  for  expression  and  working  out  indi- 
viduality along  its  own  'spiritual  lines.  The  vigour  of  his  stroke 
impresses  one  as  being  untraditional. 

"In  the  figure  of  the  Dancer  by  Shunko,  the  pupil  of  Shunsho, 
we  observe  that,  although  through  training  and  tradition  the  pupil 
has  gained  a  greater  facility,  yet  the  simplicity  of  the  master  is  lost 
in  an  excess  of  elaboration.  The  lines  resemble  those  of  Shunsho, 
though  there  is  more  uniformity  of  stroke,  with  a  greater  delicacy, 
but  the  simplicity  of  the  first  artist  is  merged  in  decorative  purpose. 
Shunsho  is  distinctly  simple  and  his  lines  have  a  blended  quality 
of  relation,  giving  a  sense  of  repose  which  in  the  pupil  is  obscured 
by  the  tendency  to  elaborate. 

"In  epitomizing  the  cardinal  qualities  expressed  in  the  Utamaro 

[73] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

prints,  the  most  marked  is  the  suggestion  of  subjective, 
Analytical  unconscious  skill  that  gives  no  impress  of  the  objective. 
Comparisons.  Each  line  seems  to  come  directly  from  the  fountain- 
head  of  the  man's  spiritual  or  soul  nature,  though  this 
very  soul  nature  expresses  itself  often  along  sensual  lines.  Indeed, 
were  the  artist  less  of  a  spiritual  genius,  he  would  often  become 
revoltingly  sensual.  To  the  casual  observer  the  lines  of  Utamaro 
show  wonderful  facility,  and  still  greater  delicacy,  yet  we  cannot 
but  observe  underlying  all  his  art,  especially  in  its  later  phases, 
this  subtle  sensuality.  The  lower  draperies  of  the  Utamaro  figures 
have  an  almost  insinuating  fullness. 

"The  compositions  of  Yeishi,  upon  superficial  study,  suggest 
marked  facility  and  even  some  originality  in  line  composition,  with 
here  and  there  an  eccentricity  which  gives  character  to  his  treatment. 
The  lines  seem  to  be  invariably  broad  and  openly  expressed.  They 
lack  the  strong  personality  and  vigorous  treatment  of  Hokusai,  the 
suggestive  delicacy  and  voluptuousness  of  Utamaro,  but  seem  to 
embody  the  vigorous  calligraphic  stroke  of  Kiyonaga.  We  can  place 
Yeishi  upon  a  plane  of  individuality  because  of  his  sensitive  tempera- 
ment which  seemed  to  be  influenced  by  his  environment  and  his 
master  teacher.  This  varied  individuality  was  accompanied  by  a 
tendency  towards  imitation,  yet  a  generous  discrimination  would 
concede  to  him  facility,  technic,  refinement  and  rare  judgment. 

"The  lines  of  Toyokuni  show  technical  skill,  and  his  calli- 
graphic stroke  is  simple  and  vigorous,  yet  he  lacks  the  spiritual  and 
suggestive  delicacy  of  Utamaro,  giving  the  impression  that  externalities 
influenced  him,  rather  than  the  finer  shades  of  artistic  interpretation. 

[74] 


■' 


The  Snowstorm. 
By  Kitugawa  ^  eizan. 


11 
i 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 

His  best  work  is  histrionic  and  is  full  of  individuality, 

breaking  through  the  traditional  stage  attitudes,  which       Analytical 

impressed  the  artists  who  developed  along  his  lines.  Comparisons. 

"Yeizan's  treatment  is  peculiarly  his  own,  having  a 
simplicity  almost  amounting  to  awkwardness  expressed  in  a  reserve  of 
treatment.  The  casual  observer  is  impressed  by  a  sense  of  incomplete- 
ness, but  this  is  overcome  when  the  simple  harmony  of  the  lines 
is  noted.  Yeizan  invariably  breaks  loose  from  his  first  reserve.  Be- 
ginning very  carefully  he  gradually  loses  his  constraint,  and  the  lower 
part  of  his  drapery  shows  greater  impulse  of  treatment. 

"The  work  of  Yeisen,  showing  much  of  Utamaro's  facility,  with 
a  touch  of  the  vigour  of  Kiyonaga,  is  yet  distinctly  conceived  along 
traditional  lines.  It  bears  the  strong  impress  of  decorative  sense,  but 
nevertheless  the  lines,  though  simple  and  well  controlled,  show  rather 
the  finished  master  of  technic  than  the  originative  mind.  In  Yeisen 
we  are  less  conscious  of  that  emanating  quality  of  originality  and 
forceful  personality  that  we  feel  in  Harunobu,  Hokusai  and 
Utamaro." 

In  analyzing  the  composition  of  the  celebrated  work  by  Hokusai, 
reproduced  on  the  opposite  page,  Mr.  Shepard  comments:  "In 
this,  as  in  all  Hokusai's  pictures,  we  note  the  combination  of  vigour 
and  gentleness,  characteristic  aggression  and  insinuating  suggestion, 
an  absolutely  masterly  touch,  and  yet  painstaking  in  minutiae.  The 
poise  of  the  figure  is  admirable  and  absolutely  satisfying  in  all 
matters  of  drawing.  The  treatment  of  the  waves,  which  are  peculiarly 
characteristic  of  the  master's  touch,  in  their  foamy  sputter  suggest 
a  comparison  with  the  strength  of  Hiroshige's  huge  billows,  majestic 

f751 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 

in  their  oily  smoothness  and  sweeping  grace.     Giving  the 

Analytical      impression  of  the  middle  distance,  the  artist  has  delicately 

Compansons.    approached  with  the  most  wonderful  ease,  the  vapory 

suggestion    of    the    distant    mountain    line.       He    slips 

from    t^e    vigour    of    the    foreground    with    a    parallel    stroke    of 

astonishing   freedom,   seeming  almost  to   remain  poised,   so   that  we 

reach  without  violence  the  faintly  suggested  distance  as  if  we  had 

unconsciously   slid   from   reality   into   dreamland,    unknowing  of   the 

transition.      Hokusai   possesses   a   masterly    technic,    a   characteristic 

vigour,  imagination,  delicacy  ofttimes  opposed  by  a  brutal  rugged- 

ness,  and  above  all  a  pervading  sense  of  humour." 


[76] 


.      I 


J 


-^^va  k>i 


T  c   i   o 

0     8    H-0 

i.S:|f 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 

Hints  to  Collectors 

of  Ukiyo-ye  Gems. 
^f^f^  O  TRULY  appreciate  Japanese  prints,  a  knowledge  of 
/  the  language  of  the  block  must  first  be  acquired,  then 

^^^^^  the  pursuit  has  an  indescribable  charm,  inexplicable  ex- 
cepting to  the  initiated,  but  to  those  who  have  fallen 
under  the  spell,  the  love  of  Ukiyo-ye  gems  becomes  a  veritable 
passion.  The  collector  of  old  prints  must  be  guided  in  his  selection 
by  the  quality  of  the  paper,  which  should  be  soft  and  vibrant,  the 
fibrous  tentacles  upon  its  surface  often  forming  shadows  where  it  has 
been  exposed  to  the  dust.  The  register  must  be  perfect,  each  colour 
being  confined  absolutely  to  its  prescribed  space.  Perfection  in  the 
register  is  an  infallible  guide,  and  prints  with  a  perfect  register  will 
increase  in  value.  The  colours  must  be  soft  and  melting,  in  many 
cases  one  tone  shading  into  another,  not  harshly  determined  by  the 
lines  of  the  block,  as  in  even  the  most  beautiful  reproductions.  The 
florid  colouring  of  the  later  impressions  by  the  Hiroshige  are  notable 
examples  of  the  deterioration  caused  by  the  use  of  cheap  pigments 
and  the  haste  of  the  printer  who  had  to  supply  the  increasing  demand 
for  cheap  pictures. 

There  are  often  exquisite  examples  of  colouring  to  be  found 
among  the  later  impressions  from  the  old  blocks,  but  the  lovely  colours 
and  nuances  of  colours  conjured  by  the  artists,  designers  and  printers 
in  loving  collaboration,  .before  commercialism  had  invaded  Japan, 
can  never  be  seen  again,  even  as  the  disciples  of  William  Morris 
seem  unable  to  reproduce  the  beautiful  shades  which  the  genius 
of  the  master  workman  evolved  from  the  dyeing-vat. 

[77] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 
Bibliography,  for  Use  of  Students. 

Anderson,  William:  Pictorial  Arts  of  Japan.      (London:  Sampson 

Low,   1886.) 
Anderson,  William:    Japanese  Wood  Engravings:    Their  History, 

Technique  and   Characteristics.       (London:     Portfolio,    1895.) 
Bing,  S. :    Artistic  Japan:    Compiled  by  S.  Bing,  with  the  assistance 

of  Wm.  Anderson,  T.  Hayashi,  E.  de  Goncourt,  and  others. 

(New  York:    Brentano's,  5  Union  Square.) 
Fenollosa,  Ernest  Francisco:   An  Outline  of  the  History  of  Ukiyo-ye. 

(Tokyo:    Kobayashi.) 
Fenollosa,   Mary  McNeil:      Hiroshige,  the  Artist  of  Mist,   Snow, 

and  Rain.      (San  Francisco,    1901.) 
Goncourt,  E.  de:     Outamaro,    Le    Peintre    des    Maisons    Vertes. 

(Paris:    11   Rue  de  Grenelle,  1891.) 
Gonse,  Louis:    L'Art  Japonais.      (Paris:    A.  Quartin,   1883.) 
Hartman,    Sadakichi:     Japanese    Art.      (Boston:      Page    &    Co., 

1904.) 
Hayashi,    T. :     Catalogue   of   the   Hayashi    Collection,    with    Illus- 
trations.     (Paris,    1902.) 
Holmes,  C.  J.:      Hokusai.      (London:    Longmans,  Green  &  Co., 

1901.) 
Huish,  Marcus  B.:     Japan  and  Its  Art.     (London:    The  Fine  Arts 

Society,   1893.) 
Jarves,  James  Jackson:     A  Glimpse  of  the  Art  of  Japan.      (New 

York,   1875.) 

[781 


IMPRESSIONS       OF       UKIYO-YE 


Okakura,  Kakuzo:  Essays  on  Japanese  Art,  in  "Japan,"  edited 
by  F.  Brinkley.  Also:  Japanese  Pictorial  Art,  in  Vol.  7, 
"Japan  and  China,"  by  F.  Brinkley.  (Boston  and  Tokyo: 
J.  B.  Millet  Co.) 

Pepper,  Charles  Hovey:  Japanese  Prints.  (Boston:  Walter 
Kimball  &  Company.) 

Perzynski,  Friedrich:    Farbenholzschnitt  Der  Japanische.     (Berlin.) 

Revon,  Michel:    Etude  Sur  Hok'sai.      (Paris,  1896.) 

Seidlitz,  W.  von:  Geschichte  Des  Japanischen  Farbenholzschnitts. 
(Dresden:  Gerhard  Kuhtmann,   1897.) 

Strange,  Edward  F. :  Japanese  Illustration.  (London:  George 
Bell  &  Sons,  1904.) 

Strange,  Edward  F. :     Colour  Prints  of  Japan.      (Langham  Series 


of  Art   Monographs. 
1904.) 


New  York:      Charles   Scribner's   Sons, 


179] 


IMPRESSIONS      OF      UKIYO-YE 


/  S. 


«*1 


Fac-similes 

of  the  most  famous  Signatures  of  Ukiyo-ye  Artists. 


i 


A 


Hishikawa  Moronobu.   Okumura  Masanobu.       Suzuki  Hatunobu. 
1643-1711-13.  1690-1720.  1747-1818. 


* 


n 


w. 


Koriusai. 
1760. 


Shunsho. 
Died  1792. 


-ft 


? 


litsu  (Hokuiai). 
1760-1849. 


Hokuiai. 
1760-1849. 


Gakio  Rojin  Manji 
(Hokuiai).  1760- 1849- 

[80] 


i 

Hok'kei. 
1780-1856-9. 


Kiyonaga. 
Died  1814. 


IMPRESSIONS     OF     UKIYO-YE 


& 


g 


Utamafo. 
1754-1806. 


11 

i 


Toyolcuni. 
1768-1825. 


Kikugawa  Yeizan. 
Flouruhed  1810-30. 


% 


kunisada. 

1785-1864. 


Yei»hi. 
Flouruhed  1754-1805. 


£ 


.1 


Keisai  Yeisen. 

1790-1848. 


If      - 

V    % 


Kuniyoshi. 

1800-1861. 


Hirorfuge 
1793- 1858-60. 


Hirothige 
1793-1858-60 


[81] 


IMPRESSIONS     OF     UKIYO-YE 


Ind 


ex 


Beni    ... 

Botticelli 

Brunt,  Henry  Van 

Child,  Theodore 
Cho  Densu 
Chromo-xylography 
Cimabue 
Crane,  Walter   - 

Danjuro 

Eta 

Forty-seven  Ronin 

Genroku 

Giorgione 

Giotto 

Guantai 

■ 

Harunobu,  Suzuki 

Hayashi,  T.  - 

Heizei 

Hiroshige 

Hogen 

Hokusai 

Itcho 
lyemitsu 

Jipensha,  Ikkou 
Josetsu 


Page 

22,39 

Kako        ... 

13 

Kano 

-   32 

Kanaoka 

-*  A 

Kenzan 

24 

-  6 
27 

-  7 
4 

Kitao        - 

Kiyomasu,  Torii    - 

Kiyomitsu,  Torii 

Kiyonaga,  Torii    - 

Kiyonobu,  Torii 

-  26 

Korin 

Koriusai   - 

25 

Kozo 

-    14 

Kunisada 

Kuranosuki  - 

■       13 

-  24 

Leonardo  da  Vinci 

7 

La  Farge 

-   70 

Mang-wa 

23-26 

Matahei 

-  38 

Masanobu 

3 

Meiji 

34,  57 

Ming  Dynasty 

7 

Mitford      - 

34,47 

Miyagawa  Choshun 

■       13 

Mitsunobu 

-   31 

Mitsunori 

Motomitsu 

36 

Moronobu     -          -    6, 

-     4 

Motonobu 

[83] 

9,  10, 


Page 

-  20 
3,4,5 

-  30 
.    13 

•-       29 

.   22 

.       26 

32,33 

-  26 

-  13 
28-33 

-  39 
20 

-  16 

13-14 

-  30 

54 
8-9 

-  5-6 

-  8 

-  2 

-  14 
21 

7 

-  9 
3 

I.  20,  21 
5,6.7 


IMPRESSIONS     OF     UKIYO-YE 


Nishiki-ye 
No  Kagura 
Notan 


Okio       - 

Okumura  Masanobu 
Otsu-ye  - 

Pater  - 
Popular  School 

Register 
Renaissance 
Rintai 
Ruskin    - 


Sesshiu 

Sekiyen 

Shigemasa 

Shigenaga 

Shoguns 

Shunro    - 

Shunsho 

Shunsui 


Index — Continued 

Page  page 

-  22  Sotatsu                                               -     ]3 
25  Sukenobu         ....          29 

-  70  Sumi-ye       -         -         -         -         -     21 

-  30,31       Tan-ye 21.39 

-  22  Tanyu          -         -         -         -         -      1 1 
10  Tokugawa        -                                       |3 

Torii  School        -        -        -        21-34 

2.6,9:30  ^School-       -               3.4.5.9 

I  oyoharu 29 

-  77  Toyokuni        -        -        -        -  33,  44 

6       Toyonobu 29 

.     70  Tsunetaka         -                                           4 

40  Utagawa     -----     29 

.     5,  Utamaro           -         -          20,33,35-46 

38     Uyeno 50 

-  29  Yamato             ....             3 
23  Yeisen         -         -        -        -        -     75 

4,  48    .  Yeishi 7| 

-  47-50  Yeitoku       -        -        ...      9 
26-29,49  Yeizan   -        -        -        -        -71,75 

22  Yoshiwara           -                         36-37 


[841 


i 

* 

W* 

_ 

On  the  Reverse. 

Surimono : 

The  Ride  of  the  Warrior  Miura  Kenisuke. 

The  inscription  is  a  Poem 

he  composed  before  setting  out 

for  Corea. 

By  Yanagawa  Shigenobu.  the  Son-in-law 

of  Hokusai. 


k 


30 
33 


A 


-n 


=> 


JO 


C 


*  so 


&-5 


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